Even the name Black Moth Super Rainbow conjures images both gorgeous and disgusting. Such is the aesthetic that BMSR has become known for. Even their album art implies that the visualization of their music from album to album is something they intend to encourage. In 2006 they released a project with like-minded The Octopus Project, the album art for which included a pair of fluid rainbows blasting out of each supposed eye socket. Two years later the Drippers EP (a scratch-and-sniff) featured one man on the cover with three different sets of eyes. Last year, their album Eating Us (with limited release in a ‘hairy summer jacket’) featured a face staring into space from the back of a nondescript hand. In each of these projects they encourage us to break past our usual conception of music as being a single-sense affair.
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Posted By David Hutchinson
A record made solely of samples seems an exhausting effort; one hard not to approach with skepticism. Essentially records created using this technique promise no hook, no point of entry. That has certainly been the case with much of Junk Culture’s label mates. Illegal Art is one of those niche labels that many like-minded musicians call home. And while these artists do need and deserve a home, it’s hard to glean too much significance when running through their records. Often times what’s most memorable is a familiar sample, rather than how it is used in a new context.
Junk Culture – West Coast
That being said, I’ve listened to this West Coast EP so many times now, the samples that were once familiar to me, as samples, now sound like they were made organically for this record. In this context the record flows so effortlessly through the brain. The perfect blend of familiarity and potency makes what could be a tiring 19 minutes of very varied soundscapes enjoyable throughout. It’s experimental, and for that reason inaccessible, to be sure. But the blurbs and dirges break up songs like ‘My Two Hands’ and ‘For Elise’, which might have been too somber for a sample based record if placed next to one another; and the vocal samples and repetition create a sort of non-traditional hook, easing the listener through tracks that might otherwise have been too noisy.
Download the entire West Coast EP on a ‘Pay What You Want’ basis from Illegal Art.
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Posted By David Hutchinson
