ABOUT THIS ITEM

Black Moth Super Rainbow frontman Tom Fec collaborates with Beck for this warped and woozy psych-pop hip-hop fever dream, set to be Anticon's highest profile album for some time.

Seemingly relegating Black Moth Super Rainbow to 'side project' status, that band's mastermind Tobacco returns with a record designed to bully his previous works into a corner, gut them, and leave ’em for dead. Though "Maniac Meat" is steepeded in the Pennsylvania-based artist's Swampy analog aesthetic, this is not an album about looking back – neither to the black psychedelic pop of BMSR, nor to the warped rap thump of Tobacco's 2006 debut, "Fucked Up Friends".

Rather, this album emerged as antithesis. Tobacco crafted "Maniac Meat" as he put the finishing touches on BMSR’s more accessible last record, "Eating Us", treating the solo release as a depository for his more primal urges. The only live instrumentation to cross over was the guttural stuff: thrashing bass and clanging drums. But even as the Tobacco material grew darker, deeper and nastier in tone, it also became something with real swag..

Take, for instance, opening track "Constellation Dirt Bike Head". Here, "Maniac Meat" hits the ground running: cymbals crashing, keyboards firing, fuzz bass blasting. Tobacco's distorted vocals sound like something exhaled from a bog, gushing, 'Burn all your things', like a mantra directed at his back-catalog. Later, the chest-crushing "Unholy Demon Rhythms" sets itself on fire, melting a beatbox sample and Jean Michel Jarre-like synth excursions into a hot, tactile mass. One of album’s best tracks , "Heavy Makeup", is upbeat electro-pop caked in wet earth, eventually interrupted by a searing harmonica solo.

Is it any wonder then, that "Maniac Meat" – which plays like a dingy refraction of the pink-hued era that Tobacco came up in, the late 80s/early 90s – would attract the attention of Beck Hansen? He's the record's lone guest, alternately sparring and coasting with Tobacco's well-known arsenal of vintage synthesizers, noise boxes and voice modulators. On "Fresh Hex", Beck’s alliterative, free-associative rap is chopped to bits over baroque key sequences and whirring effects, while on "Grape Aerosmith", the chameleonic singer stretches out in a pool of flickering etherea.

The record also sports more vocals than its predecessor, with the glitch-riddled "Six Royal Vipers" and warped banger "Overheater" bleeding strange imagery into the mix – shadows of ancient psychedelia buried under glistening murk. "Maniac Meat" is by far Tobacco's most varied creation to date.

01. Constellation Dirtbike Head
02. Fresh Hex (Feat. Beck)
03. Mexican Icecream
04. Lick The Witch
05.Sweatmother
06. Motorlicker
07. Unholy Demon Rhythms
08. Heavy Makeup
09. Grape Aerosmith (Feat. Beck)
10. New Juices From The Hot Tub Freaks
11. Six Royal Vipers
12. Overheater
13. Creepy Phone Calls
14. TV All Greasy
15. Stretch Your Face
16. Nuclear Waste Aerobics