Album Details

• Artist: Tobacco
• Album: Fucked Up Friends
• Label: Anticon
• Year of Release: 2008
• Reviewed by: dscanland on 2008-11-27

From Giant Step

Tobacco sometimes runs with a group called Black Moth Super Rainbow, but on his latest mission, Fucked Up Friends, he works alone. Tobacco's tools are analog synths, tape machines and deformed incantations from throats unknown. His music is a wash of distortion and melody over jagged beats. It amalgamates hypnotic, cosmopolitan pop, gritty, propulsive hip-hop and a night full of fevered dreams. It buoys the spirit, braces the nerves, and smuggles disoriented paranoia deep into the subconscious.

F*cked Up Friends is a collection of boombox rockers: "Hairy Candy" echoes the summer-fixated celebrations of Black Moth Super Rainbow, but with a dark perimeter. "Hawker Boat" and "Dirt (Instrumental Version)" strains stadium-rock grandeur through a dirty filter, served with rocks and salt. "Side 8 (Big Gums Version)," "Backwoods Altar" and "Get My Nails Did" expose a deep menace beneath their enticing rhythms - they get stuck in your head like sinister get-rich-quick schemes. As a whole, the album establishes Tobacco as a one-man genre. Even with the latest tape-to-tape dubbing technology, F*cked Up Friends can't be duplicated.

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