Tobacco

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2019

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tobacco is the nom de guerre of electronic musician and composer Tom Fec. Tom also founded the music collective Black Moth Super Rainbow. In both projects, the music he makes is rich and layered, but kind of dirty and unsettling, sometimes, too. He works with a lot of vintage synthesizers and records on older equipment. On this episode, he talks with Jesse about his history in music - from noodling around with synths and guitars and a four track to working with Aesop Rock on his latest project - called Malibu Ken. He'll also explain why he avoided interviews and stayed anonymous for so long, and why that changed.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:13.5	I'm Jesse Thorn, it's Bullseye.
0:22.3	It wasn't long ago.
0:23.5	Less than 10 years that record labels used to send us dozens of unsolicited CDs in the mail.
0:32.8	So many unsolicited CDs.
0:35.6	And obviously we all know why record labels aren't spending any more money on thousands
0:40.2	and thousands of free CDs for radio producers and DJs and music critics and so on and
0:46.8	so forth.
0:47.8	But it was a nice time in my life.
0:50.0	That was actually how I heard about my next guest.
0:52.9	I was doing this show out of my apartment in Los Angeles and we got a CD.
0:59.6	It's a black and white photograph on the cover, a picture of a man's hand and on the hand
1:05.6	there is a woman's face.
1:07.6	The band was called Black Moth Super Raidbow and the title was Eating Us.
1:12.9	And I listened to it mostly because I thought the cover was interesting.
1:16.8	I had no idea what to expect.
1:23.9	It turned out it was great.
1:31.9	Rich and kind of dirty and unsettling.
1:35.4	There are all these old synthesizers and bits of tape distortion and weird processed
1:40.5	vocals.
1:41.8	They sound a bit like Boards of Canada or maybe David Bowie or 9-inch nails.
1:45.8	It's very difficult to describe but I couldn't stop listening.
	...

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