Customer Reviews

Dandelion Gum

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm new to this band, but I've grown to really like just about everything I've heard from them so far with Dandelion Gum being by far my favorite album. Their songs sound like collections of late seventies/early eighties PBS educational show's theme songs on steroids and dust, set to quasi-hip hop beats with a dash of folk and rock splashed in the right places for good measure. I know all those elements combined seem like they would be ridiculous together but it actually works and sounds incredible. Tracks like "When the Sun Grows on Your Tongue", "Jump Into My Mouth and Breathe the Stardust", & "Forever Heavy" have been rolling around in my head for days now, the rest of the album has stuck really well, but those are the tracks that stood out for me. I've listened to nothing but BMSR and The Octopus Project for the past week or so, but Dandelion Gum has been the one getting the most play. I honestly can't think of anything signifigantly wrong with this record and would highly recommend it to people with open minded musical tastes.

This album is just awesome. Totally mind blowing. Interesting, strange, melodic, filled with oddball instrumentation somehow worked out so as to be catchy and weird at the same time. I've been really digging this record for a few weeks now and highly recommend checking them out.

Analog synths, dusty breakbeats, mellotron, theremin, fuzzy basslines, gross misuse of a vocoder, what's not to like? The song titles say it all. Also check out their album with The Octopus Project, "The House Of Apples And Eyeballs". Music to melt yer mind...

This is a great album, other worldly psychedelic sounds that are fun to hear. I read in an interview with the band that the concept behind this album was that someone was lost in the woods, and found this house, and a lady inside the house gave them different kinds of candy, and each song is supposed to be what they experienced when they ate it, kind of interesting. Definitely visionary, but it's not hard to get into.

When I first heard Dandelion Gum by Black Moth Super Rainbow, I was alone in my living room at 2 AM, in just the right mindset for the musical journey on which I was about to embark. At first, the record was seemed slightly inaccessible if not artistically alien, but by a second or third listen, the album's psychedelic electro-folk soundscape began to unfold. Dandelion Gum utilizes the technology of synthesizers, vocoders, and analog instrumentation such as drums and acoustic guitar looping to construct an animated hyper-reality. To spell out more specifically what this alternate world is like, the album insert captures it quite succinctly: "Deep in the woods of western Pennsylvania vocoders hum amongst the flowers and synths bubble under the leaf-strewn ground while flutes whistle in the wind and beats bounce to the soft drizzle of a warm acid rain. As the sun peeks out from between the clouds, the organic aural concoction of Black Moth Super Rainbow starts to glisten above the trees." The band, basing its recording project somewhere in rural Pennsylvania, combines synthetic electronic sounds to construct a hallucinatory environment like no other. The moods suggests a place deep within the woods of a storybook, or somewhere along a rainbow, or perhaps just a dream world encountered along the way during some kind of psilocybin-induced journey.
Regardless of the `artistic location,' the tracks are more importantly impressive in their original use of music technology. With trippy keyboard loops and guitar riffs, overlaid with drum sampling and synth swishes and wheows, each song carries the catchy and highly creative psychedelic theme, though not sacrificing each track's individuality in the process. The keyboards sound vintage with Moog-like textures and a sort of early synthesizer nostalgia, while the guitars sparkle with heavily reverbed acoustic melodies.
What distinguishes the album as a whole, however, are the vocals. The leads singer, also known by the alias "TOBACCO" sings the entire record through a vocoder, greatly distorting any lyrical clarity, and veiling the otherwise poppy melodies with a kind of dark ambience. The kinds of timbres generated through this vocoding create voices that sound unrecognizably human, almost fairytale-esque. Manipulated through technological means in a striking original way, the vocals style of TOBACCO suit their psychedelic hyper-reality almost perfectly.
The magnum opus of the album is "Sun Lips." With its convincingly melodic synth looping and catchy lyrical chant "I love to be with you and the sun will rise, the sun will rise," the song epitomizes the mood and electronic textures that Black Moth is trying to achieve. "Lost Picking Flowers in the Woods" actually uses a Hammond B3 riff, reinforced by a powerful, driving percussion to establish its hauntingly trippy theme. Other gems on the album include "Jump into my Mouth and Breath the Stardust," "Rollerdisco," "Drippy Eye," and "Lollipopsichord."
With Dandelion Gum, Black Moth Super Rainbow has effectively embraced technology through the use of vocoding, synthesizers, and sampling to construct an entirely new world of their own, born from the creative depths of a dark, yet playful psychedelic imagination. But even amongst all of the technological gadgetry at work, there is still something less-than-serious about their vision, as though they intentionally used analog and early electronic sounds to establish a world that is actually quite playful. Whatever the case, Black Moth leaves that sort of interpretation up to the listener.

This cd is great. One of the top mood bands out there. Listen to this album before you walk into a forest filled with man eating gummi bears.

I agree with all the other reviewers so far, except that instead of making the Boards of Canada comparison (which I can see, it's just kind of a stretch) I'd make the Air comparison. When I first heard this album, I didn't think much of it. It felt too synthesized and lacking in the human element... but then I listened to it again, and I can't really explained why, but things just clicked and I absolutely HAD to listen to this once a day, mostly right after waking up... and if I didn't something felt missing.
Crazy, right?

So, bottom line: It took a few listens without any distractions, but now I am a huge BMSR fan and I'm looking forward to their next release coming up in a few months (and really glad that stories of their dis-banding were just rumors).

...Boards of Canada's Campfire Headphase with vocoder vocals and a healthy dose of Freescha's Head Warlock Double Stare.

If you know exactly what I'm talking about and are looking for something similar yet simultaneously unique, then I guarantee you can do no wrong if you stop here and check these guys out. The album art appropriately captures the mood of the album.

When you're finished, don't stop there. Apparently each mysteriously named member of the band (Tobacco, The Seven Fields of Aphelion, Iffernaut, Power Pill Fist, and Father Hummingbird) has their own side project under their mysterious member name.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, pick up Dandelion Gum along with the other two above mentioned ablums now, sit back, and prepare yourself for a blissed out, psychedelic ride of electronica, 70s inspired folk, and dreamy weirdness.

Like audible bubblegum laced with LSD

Seriously funky and new

For fans of strange beats

This is the best album. I've been off instrumental bands for like a year. I've hear a lot of bands that sucked and have told people so. This band sounds like the Doors keyboardist going all the way with Allen Ginsberg. Older material may be less interesting but this album pulls it all together. Pick it up!