Maniac Meat, the new project from Black Moth Super Rainbow mastermind Tobacco, easily hurdles any of his previous outputs by a significant extent. Consider the state of the world and I must delicately express it’s the best fucking record this year and everyone should stop everything they’re doing for the next six months or so and just groove on this kaleidoscopic hysteria. You thought Black Moth was trippin’ balls? shiiiiit… Tobacco is Black Moth on milk-plus from A Clockwork Orange fortified with that Substance D from A Scanner Darkly. And for all the excitement and cartoonish lunacy in the maniacal sythn explosions and the frenzied parade of overlapping engines, Tom Fec chooses candid words carefully, never as rambunctious and turbulent as the music, usually taking a second to think between phrases.

REAX: So you’re not touring right now, you just got back from touring.
TOBACCO: I think it’s pretty much over until September. There are a couple of one-offs but we won’t really go back out until September.

RE: What do you have planned the next couple months?
T: I’ve been trying to figure that out. I wasn’t really, I was sort of planning on touring all summer and then that didn’t come together so now I’m, I don’t know. I guess swimming.

RE: Last night, April 27, was the Maniac Meat pre-order, the special bundles (sold on your website) sold out last night.
T: Yeah I think it took like a minute.

RE: Are you surprised they went that fast?
T: I’m really surprised it went that fast yeah, we did one for Eating Us, and it took like fifteen minutes and there were a lot less. It was pretty crazy. I was totally unprepared for that.

RE: Do you think next time you’ll make even more?
T: I think next time I probably won’t do it. I don’t know I think a lot of people got really angry with me, because there weren’t enough. I got a lot of nasty, it’s strange I know but I got so many nasty messages from people who didn’t get there’s. It’s like I try to do this fun thing and it should’ve been fun and hopefully it was for a lot of people. There’s just like six or seven people in that bunch just had to take it too far.

RE: Have you thought maybe people are so dedicated that they get frustrated and it’s knee-jerk reaction?
T: Oh yeah I can totally understand that. But why are you frustrated with me, you know?

RE: What’s on the extra CDR, called Mystic Thickness, that’s coming out with some of the special bundles?
T: It’s just a bunch of stuff that didn’t make it onto the actual record. I think it’s somewhere around nine tracks. I was actually going to make Maniac Meat my first double album, and then I thought maybe that was a little too much. I’m making music for short attention spans anyway. I felt a double album from someone like me is over the top.

RE: You said before, you mentioned “short attention spans.” Can you elaborate on what you mean?
T: I’ve got the shortest attention span of them all. That’s what I’m thinking about when I’m making this stuff. Most of my songs are under three minutes. On this record some of them are under two minutes. I like to get the ideas out there as fast as I can. I’m not a slow builder. I’m not a classic album kind of guy. Like audio skittles sort of.



RE: When was the cover made for Maniac Meat?
T: The cover’s something I’ve been working on probably for two years it’s just been constantly changing.

RE: I remember seeing the cover well before any of the songs. Is that a real touchstone for you? that sort of Garbage Pale Kid icon guy?
T: Yeah I made a picture that would become something like the album cover. If you sort of imagine running this sweet old Italian restaurant and your grandparents owned the restaurant, and you have their picture, their portrait is up on the wall and you look at the portrait for inspiration. As I was making these songs I wanted them to sound like that.

RE: Do you think if people listen to the music first and then see the album cover that it’ll change the music’s context?
T: I don’t think so. I think this is one of those things where they both make sense together.

RE: I also noticed on the album cover it has in the bottom right corner a “Parental Advisory” sticker. How important was that, to have that on the end product?
T: In what respect do you mean?

RE: Well you talk about audio skittles, and you’re a child of the 80s with a short attention span, and all these culled VHS horror movies for Fucked Up Friends DVD, they’re sort of touchstones for me. It makes sense to me as it branches out, like when you were a kid and you went to the mall to buy a rap CD, that sticker was there, it meant something. It meant that within was, not perverse. It meant that it wasn’t for everybody. It wasn’t full of positive social messages and that made you want it even more.
T: Yeah you pretty much nailed it.

RE: I was reading the song titles and I was wondering if they’re as significant as the album cover?
T: Yeah, it’s all part of the whole package, whether the songs have anything to do with the titles, it’s all, I think the pictures you see, the words that you read, and the music you hear are the three elements and maybe even the way the thing smells when you open it. It’s all part of it.

RE: I don’t have the album yet. Are there lyrics inside?
T: I did put lyrics in this one. I’ve been anti-lyrics for a long time because I just want people to interpret them, but I don’t know I really like the abstract or kind of gross shit I was saying this time. I really liked what I said this time. It just made a lot of sense to me this time to put them in there.

RE: Last year, is this what you were making while you were jogging, Maniac Meat?
T: This was my ultimate jogging record last year.



RE: What do you think is the best song on Maniac Meat? the closest one that constitutes nearing exactly what you want to express, where all is necessity and everything unimportant is discarded, your most focused song?
T: Oh it’s totally the first one. That’s probably my favorite song I’ve ever made.

RE: Is Maniac Meat secretly the greatest soundtrack for recreational fitness?
T: Yeah I think it’s a good record for fat people to get in-shape to and it’s a good record for in-shape people to stay in-shape to.

RE: The songs on Maniac Meat, did you acoustically build them like on your other albums?
T: No, not at all. All these songs really started off with me playing around with noises and weird loops.

RE: Do you have the album cover for your next project already made?
T: No there is no next project yet. It’s weird, this is kind of the first record I’ve ever done that feels really perfect to me, for what I was going for, and just want to enjoy it and support it for as long as I can. Usually I‘ll make a record, and before the record is even out I’m halfway through the next because I’m not thrilled, not perfectly satisfied with what I made so I’m trying to make that perfect thing. I don’t really feel like topping this one.

RE: Is there any song on Eating Us that is as near-perfect as anything on Maniac Meat?
T: No not at all.

RE: I had some questions about the Fucked Up Friends 2 DVD. How long did it take to make?
T: About half of it has been in existence since my first tour as Tobacco back in 2008, that was stuff I was playing live. And the other half came late last year. It took a few months to put the other half together.

RE: Do you see those collages as the music videos to the songs?
T: I used to sort of, but now I think it’s more as a giant piece. Both I see Fucked Up Friends 1 and 2 as a big piece.

RE: Did you film any portions of Part 2 yourself? I wanted to know about the haunted house, the spook house?
T: One of them is. The other one is not. One of them is this place up in Eerie.

RE: Is that the one you’re going through doors with purple squares?
T: Yeah.

RE: Why that place in Eerie?
T: I used to go there as a kid and then stopped for a long time. It must’ve been two summer ago I was sort of nervous about them closing that dark ride so I shot it a couple times, went through a couple times.

RE: How do you have access to so many old VHS cassettes? do you still have your collection? a friend that owns a VHS shop?
T: No he’s not a friend. I won’t give it out yet, because we’re going to play a show there this summer, a secret show there. It’s this place in Ohio that, I think the guy lives there, it’s like a storefront. Just thousands, there’s got to be a million videotapes and the guy just lives there. The store doesn’t open in the winter. It only opens for a few months in the spring and summer and the guy has a mattress in the back and you just throw as many tapes as you can into a box and give him twenty bucks.

RE: So that’s how you got the stash to cull from?
T: Yeah, Fucked Up Friends 2, besides that one thing that I shot it was pretty much all that.

RE: Are there plans for further installments in the Fucked Up Friends series?
T: I’m not sure, not yet at least.

RE: On Fucked Up Friends 2, the song “Fresh Hex” appears as an instrumental. On Maniac Meat that’s one of the tracks with Beck. Were vocals always planned for that song?
T: That song wasn’t even, that song was supposed to be on Fucked Up Friends the album, but I don’t know I didn’t really like it so I took it off. And when I was putting Maniac Meat together I still didn’t think it fit and I had updated it and left it off there. When Beck came along, he really liked it. It totally made sense with him working on that song. I didn’t think, that was one of those songs that if Beck’s not on it then I don’t want to use it.

RE: For someone unfamiliar with Tobacco, what would you say is the major difference between an Eating Us and Maniac Meat?
T: I’ll try to say it in a more positive light than I normally would. Eating Us is…

RE: Are you really not that happy with Eating Us?
T: Not really. It’s fine for what it is.

RE: You really think you could have done better?
T: That’s why I kick myself. Every time I think about that record I kick myself because I could have done so much better.

RE: Why is that?
T: I could’ve put a lot more thought and time into it, instead of sort of like half finishing the ideas and then waiting, expecting (producer) Dave (Fridmann) to finish them. If I would had actually put everything into it like I normally would I think I would have been a lot happier with it.

RE: But Maniac Meat to you is worlds better, right?
T: To me. Maybe not to some people. But to me it’s like two years of me fucking around and having fun with music, instead of two years of me trying to make something that I think people want.

RE: Will it be awhile before you release something new?
T: I can’t foresee putting anything out for a long time. There’s going to be more to come this year. There’s going to be more MC stuff over Maniac Meat beats. I’m not sure if it’s going to be an EP, I don’t know how it’s going to get out there. They’re all done and they’re all ready to go. I’m just not sure how it’s going to get out there.

Curious to learn more about Tobacco and/or Black Moth super Rainbow? Read my interview with him from last year: http://reaxmusic.com/article50637-Black-Moth-Super-Rainbow

For further information about Tobacco visit http://www.blackmothsuperrainbow.com