Black Moth Super Rainbow defy preconceived notions
What they think of Pink
Although we hear some of the same synths in “Eating Me” that we do in Pink Floyd classics, Tobacco is not ready to embrace the band that set the stage for psychedlia. But he does like his Weiland!
Is “Animals” your favorite Pink Floyd album? I’m not that familiar with them as a band. I’ve never heard that. I’m not really a psychedelic music fan. I like one song by them that I know on “Wish You Were Here,” but I don’t really like most of their music.
You guys have such a similar keyboard sound at times though. We’re probably using similar keyboard because of the time period of those guys, I only heard one song I like by them, that’s got this keyboard in it that’s sort of similar to the one I’m using. I don’t really know enough of their catalogue.
Is that song “Welcome to the Machine”? Yeah!
That’s really the only Pink Floyd song you like? Well, my dad had “Dark Side of the Moon,” and one other one, I can’t remember, it was green? I don’t know, I guess that was the time in my life where everything I was hearing, I sort of thought it was dumb, but it must have stuck with me. There’s some albums where I think the songs are terrible.
Well, if that’s something that surprises me that you don’t listen to, what’s something that would surprise me that you do listen to? I don’t know if this would surprise people, but I don’t really like Pitchfork kind of music. I love Stone Temple Pilots. I think I’m one of the only people in the world that loves that solo album that Scott Weiland came out with this year, stuff like that.
Listening to “Eating Me,” the latest release from Black Moth Super Rainbow, there is no question about what the group’s greatest muse is. It’s clear as daylight. Well, that’s because their muse is daylight, or lack thereof, at least.
There are song titles like “Born on a Day the Sun Didn’t Rise” and lyrics about “waiting for sunlight,” and their revolutionary video for “Dark Bubbles” features a guy in a silver suit jumping on a trampoline with a feature that allows viewers to shift the background from day to night and back again with a mouse or webcam.
But according to BMSR’s singer, a man who goes by the name of Tobacco, this thematic consistency wasn’t his initial intention.
“I guess the sun is just one of those ideas that’s really universal,” he says in a voice that is surprisingly clear, given that he records all his vocals through a flanging effect called a vocoder.
“I guess that’s an easy word to go to for me,” he says about the sun. “It’s kind of a coincidence, it’s not really anything I did on purpose … It’s kind of embarrassing.”
Coincidence or not, the tunes on “Eating Me” give off the vibe of a group of friends doing drugs until that big bright thing in the sky comes up.
Also, not quite the case, says Tobacco.
“Some of it is I’ll stay up really late on my own, just mainly because I can’t get to sleep or I can’t find something else to do,” he says. “It has nothing to do with staying up and being stoned.”
Black Moth Super Rainbow
Friday, 7:30 p.m.
Institute of Contemporary Art
100 Northern Ave., Boston
MBTA: Silver Line to World Trade Center
$25, 617-478-3100 www.icaboston.org
