It’s a reasonable question, really. What in blazes is “listener-friendly” supposed to mean to an otherworldly sonic abstraction like Black Moth Super Rainbow? Your humble Austin Music Minute maven sought out their 2007 full-length Dandelion Gum not for its accessibility, but to find the track that got me hooked on BMSR’s beautiful bizarreness (“They Live in the Meadow”) in the first place. So, it’s a tad perplexing to see some reviews noting the Pittsburgh quintet’s latest release, Cobra Juicy, as their “most accessible album” thus far. Despite a seemingly more linear map-out, the album still embraces the wonderfully weird, with mutating vocoder in full effect for lyrical abstruseness.
BMSR is more of a psych/prog-synth entity rather than a band, shrouded in mystery of somewhat mythological proportions and marked only by pseudonyms for each of its members. Front man and founder Tobacco prefers to avoid interviews and photos. But it makes the music all the more intriguing. It’s mesmerizing electronic robo-pop swirling within avant-garde structures, with white-hot pulsating beats or cooler down-tempos. Behold: Pop from another dimension. Perhaps Madeleine L’Engle‘s A Wrinkle In Time set to music by Salvador Dali.
Embrace the aura. Black Moth Super Rainbow is in town for a show tonight at the Mohawk, 912 Red River, on the outside stage. The bill includes Chicago-based production duo The Hood Internet and Chicago’s experimental trip pop-sters The Oscillator Bug. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Then be sure to catch the aftershow inside the Mohawk with local artist Sean Padilla‘s R&B crunk-pop project The Cocker Spaniels, garage punk trio Those Howlings and bike punk brigade Bike Problems.
This is gonna be a great night. Recommended. And leave your expectations at the door, please.
