Tobacco - Sweatbox Dynasty

Tom Fec is back!  One part of Black Moth Super Rainbow you'll almost certainly know him by his pseudonym, Tobacco.  That's the name he also releases his solo stuff under and if you know the name then you almost certainly know his M.O.  Dirty, grimy keyboards, vocals that are barely recognised as such and defy interpretation and drum breaks that cut in and out with the kind of random abandon that is delicious and head scratching in equal measures.  Its like Animal Collective in Centipede HZ mode but their ugly step-child.  Full on funk, grime and distortion. Somehow its usually works.

Sweatbox Dynasty isn't long, just around the half hour mark and its mostly short sharp bursts of funk, pop noise.  Human Om starts proceedings in a very promising slow building fashion with a hook that breaks into being like a motorbike engine put through a synthesizer until it goes all futuristic and Buck Rogers.  He used to sound like a Spectrum loading screen on acid, now he sounds like a throwback 80's pop masterpiece reinterpreted and fuelled with dirt, distortion and menace.  The previous two albums have seen a gradual evolving of the sound and here on Dynasty there might just be the pinnacle of this in the almost structures Gods In Heat.  The plodding start belies a conventional structure with a chorus in which he sings 'I can make you slow down, I can make you haul ass.'  Probably.  Given the distorted nature of the vocals he could just as likely be reciting the book of revelations in reverse.  However, the hook of this number is possibly the greatest moment Tobacco has produced.  It is, though, not enough to rise this piece to greatness.  The evolving sound has stopped evolving.  

If you know how Tobacco sounded on Maniac Meat and Ultima II Massage then you know how he sounds here.  There isn't enough variety.  There isn't enough progression and ultimately there are too many two minute numbers like Hong which bog the whole thing down.  Black Moth Super Rainbow released a short sharp collection earlier in the year and many complained that it sounded like a short vignette of what their new album would be, some off cuts thrown out to tantalise.  This isn't the same but it does feel that it could be much greater.  Tobacco, though still comes through this as someone to keep your ears out for.