Customer Reviews

Eating Us

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Yet another morsel of psychedelic acid-tinged sweetness from Black Moth Super Rainbow. "Eating Us" takes everything that was great about "Dandelion Gum," the bubbly analogue synths (their adjective, not mine), the vocoder-heavy vocals, and puts it all through a higher-fidelity filter. While I'm more of a fan of the warmer, tape-saturated production on their previous effort, the music itself is still as strong as ever. The melodies are still deliciously lazy and the synths will wash you away into a hazy dream. Also, the clearer production gives allows the lyrics to be heard (slightly) more clearly, though, whether or not that is a merit is also debatable. Indie-tronic is too generic to do this group justice. Just listen to the clips here on the site and you'll know right away if you're ready to join BMSR on their pink cotton candy cloud.

This is such a cool band! If you get a chance watch on of their videos on You Tube. I'm not sure where these guys heads are at or what they are singing about, but definitely melodic and original tunes. I haven't heard anyting quite like it. This group has been in my top 5 for the last 3 years. And Eathing US is at least as good as their last release.

About Black Moth Super Rainbow:

After a year of eerie, stilted silence, the sun shines and the shadows reappear. Black Moth Super Rainbow has crept from the forests and cities to make Eating Us, their dark bubblegum freakout for 2009. The first fully hi-fi BMSR record, Eating Us adds space and dimension to the band's sticky, off-kilter melodies. This isn't an album about witches and woods, and this time around the band isn't letting on to what it all might mean. Because to them, it's just better that way.

The modern musical unit known as Black Moth Super Rainbow first emerged from an obscure Pennsylvania forest glen in 2003 to relay a somewhat confounding sound with Falling Through a Field. Over the next few years, that peculiar sound developed, and the cult of BMSR began. With the release of their naturally-sweetened, candy-coated, and acclaimed 2007 treat, Dandelion Gum, a number of curious listeners bent their ears and adjusted their listening habits to incorporate Black Moth Super Rainbow's oddly creepy and off-beat sweet audio plyings. A string of tours supporting big brothers Flaming Lips and Aesop Rock positioned the oft-camera shy outfit in front of thousands of brand new sonically adventurous music enthusiasts who weren't necessarily prepared for the eccentric visuals of BMSR's surreal live show, but would hopefully emerge changed, and be better off for it.

Their new full length presentation for 2009, Eating Us, promises to up the ante on the fidelity and melodies that BMSR have become known for. Here, the merry cryptic band has added some new flavors to their already well-established rainbow of sounds, with even more dense layers of lushly complex orchestration, intensely rhythmic drumming from a live, human drummer, vocoder vocals that are anything but robotic, and thick, undulating bass tones.

Eating Us marks the first time BMSR has ventured into a modern recording studio, being partially tracked and fully produced by Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, MGMT, Weezer) at Tarbox Studios, who was the only choice of producer for notedly anti-studio BMSR quasi-frontman Tobacco. Only Fridmann's hands and ears were trusted to keep the freaked out wiggles and hairy candies fully in-tact, while also expanding them in a more realistic space. This music agreeably dwells in contradiction; the songs contained herein have a feel both earnestly nostalgic, and hauntingly futuristic. Should the robots working in our factories, vacuuming our floors, and operating our gaming consoles choose to rise up and revolt, Eating Us could, perhaps, be used to serve as the first indication that our beloved machines had begun to understand the subtle complexities of human emotion.

These beat heavy, hook-laden, eerily comforting sonic capsules are as complex as a circuit board and as contagious as the common cold. For all those whose ears opt take part in listening, be forewarned that each and every track of Eating Us is equally apt to infest the more delicate portions of your cerebral cortex and nest into any readily available nook, cranny, or unprotected cavity of your susceptible brain with a very minimal chance of being easily ousted. Now a six piece, BMSR could come or go at any time, however 2009 promises a return to touring.

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A perfect place where the music should be in these days where the music scene is extremely boring, "Black Moth Super Rainbow" comes to make us so happy and to satisfy our brains and fill our ears of glorious sounds.
Black Moth Super Rainbow makes some of the most tripped-out experimental music you'll hear around these days, psychedelic electro-rock that belongs in a sci-fi space odyssey done in the 1970's. And it's not like that hard to sit through, hard to appreciate expert stuff Black Moth's music is vibrant, a rainbow of flavors that practically jumps out of the speakers to get your notice.
The modern musical unit known as Black Moth Super Rainbow first emerged from an obscure Pennsylvania forest glen in 2003 to relay a somewhat confounding sound with Falling Through a Field. Over the next few years, that peculiar sound developed, and the cult of BMSR began. With the release of their naturally-sweetened, candy-coated, and acclaimed 2007 treat, Dandelion Gum, a number of curious listeners bent their ears and adjusted their listening habits to incorporate Black Moth Super Rainbow's oddly creepy and off-beat sweet audio playing.
Now, the big difference is in the texture. Where the band previously embraced the warbly imperfection of its lo-fi recording process, Eating Us is all about crisp production. Credit for the newfound polish (or blame, for the purists) goes to Flaming Lips producer Dave Fridmann -- the first professional producer the band has recruited. The drums in particular bear Fridmann's fingerprints, compressed to perfection for maximum impact on album opener "Born on a Day the Sun Didn't Rise," but the entire album is noticeably crisper than the band's previous output, even as it maintains the laid-back psych vibe.
While Black Moth has never been shy about the influence of electronic music on its sound -- the band has even been derided in some corners as just an analogue take on Boards of Canada -- the production on Eating Us brings that influence to the forefront. "Gold Splatter" particularly sounds like an outtake from Air's Moon Safari, albeit one that's as good as anything that actually made it onto that album. It also makes the album an easy entry point for a band that's always hidden its pop instincts beneath occasionally off-putting production. In fact, with its hazy atmosphere and casual hookiness, Eating Us comes very close to being perfect blissed-out summer listening. It's only when you really start to pay attention, and hear lines like "Neon lemonade, eat my face away" (from "Iron Lemonade") that you realize the band's trademark weirdness is still present. There are some things that production can't change.
Their last album, 2007's `Dandelion Gum', was a drug-addled kaleidoscope of a record, and Black Moth Super Rainbow's follow-up seems to stick with that narcotically fused formula. But, whereas its predecessor sounded cheap and claustrophobic, now their psych-electro has a sumptuous glissade to it. The dreamy `Twin Of Myself' is twinklier than anything they've done so far, while `Born On A Day The Sun Didn't Rise' is awash with lush, sugary synths.
A distinctive sound perfected by BMSR over the years has culminated in an album that is all about delicate musical layering, fluidity, style and most defiantly substance. This isn't music to get you going but an album to relax too.
"Black Moth Super Rainbow" is a fantastic, vibrant, full of unexpected outages.

"Eating Us" is the best introduction to the trippy and tuneful pop hooks of BMSR. The band brings together bits of Air, Eno, Beck, Captain Beefheart (Father Hummingbird = The Mascara Snake?) and others into something original and of its time. Highly recommended.

This album is amazing, containing more adverse synths and harder sounds than their last album. Though the main element is not lost, loose psychedelic guitar riffs, they continue to bring about a change in the scene for the better, adding to an already astounding catalogue.

This album is the best thing to listen to with a lot of people of the right temperment. It is very trippy electronica mixed with vocoder falsetto vocals. All the songs have interesting names and excellent lyrics. The closest thing I can come to describing the sound is like candy for the ears, just pure sugar.

Well, for someone who digs shoe-gaze, space-out music, this reviewer thought he hit the motherlode the first time "Eating Us" started spinning. This CD is a major surprise, combining aggressive percussion (frequently lacking in this genre), wonderful synth-washes, a lush wall of sound, and (barely decipherable) electronically treated vocals. Who cares about the lyrics - these tracks are uniformly strong, and VERY catchy. There's something to be said, by the way, for the accessibility of these tunes. Prior Moth efforts flew off into weird phrasing and off-beat rhythms and just weren't all that much fun to listen to. "Eating Us" - with 12 solid tracks - delivers payoffs and subtle delights worth experiencing over and over again.

By the way, extended remixes: do they exist and how might one acquire same? Inquiring moth minds need to know.