When Tom Fec, aka Tobacco, first started releasing music under the name Black Moth Super Rainbow in 2003, his approach to building songs out of analog keyboard gear stood out from his contemporaries—including acts with a similar tonal aesthetic, like Boards of Canada. By 2004, in time for the second BMSR full-length Start a People, he added a vocoder effect to his vocals that remains his signature to this day. Almost 15 years later, the queasy, semi-lo-fi, electro-psychedelic alt-hip hop style Fec invented still sounds completely unique. But he hasn’t done himself any favors with albums that sound increasingly half-baked. Even at his most epic, namely BMSR’s sprawling 2007 breakthrough Dandelion Gum, Fec tends to throw songs together without much regard for finessing the flow between tracks.
He has always maintained that BMSR and Tobacco are separate entities—BMSR is the more pop-leaning of the two—but by 2014’s Tobacco album Ultima II Massage, the line had gotten thin. On that album, it was hard to tell the difference between the more traditionally song-oriented style BMSR had evolved into, and the jagged edges that initially set Tobacco apart. Ultima II played like a hodge-podge of leftovers, so it could signal trouble that the latest Tobacco album Ripe & Majestic literally is a hodge-podge of leftovers spanning 2007 to present. It is almost completely devoid of vocals, and only two of its 24 tracks are more recent than 2015, one being an instrumental of a track he gave to rapper Beans, released as “Cemetery Wind.”
Nevertheless, Ripe & Majestic actually flows. This is the first time Fec has recaptured Dandelion Gum’s sense of journeying through a landscape filled with peaks, valleys, and strangely-colored flora. With its synth line that echoes off into the distance, “Octogram” creates a feeling of looking out towards a windswept horizon. It also has an almost identical production style as Dandelion Gum—which is no surprise, since it hails from the same year. But unlike the abrupt, whiplash-inducing stops on previous Tobacco albums, “Octogram” segues seamlessly into “Feels Like Nothing,” a tune from a different period where soft synth chords percolate in an intricate, perfectly woven call-and-response with what sounds like a fingerpicked banjo filtered through light distortion.
Shifting in style and tone ever so slightly from tune to tune, Ripe & Majestic sidesteps the punishing uniformity and sandpaper-y abrasion of last year’s proper Tobacco album, Sweatbox Dynasty. This time, in spite of the usual sophomoric song titles (“Slaughtered by the Amway Guy,” “Hick School,” “Pube Zone”) Fec doesn’t focus so much on obscuring the beauty in his music. “Wig Blows Off,” for example, skips along at a hopscotch cadence, the mood of the synths as sunny and hopeful as that childhood feeling of anticipation on a picture-perfect summer day.
There are even times when Fec finally pushes himself beyond the musical limits that so strongly define him. On “Sassy Ministries” (the aforementioned Beans instrumental), slick keyboards and simulated handclaps show that, when he wants to, Fec is capable of crafting glossy electronica without sacrificing his individuality. And though the moody noise-collage of album closer “Moss Mouth” is 10 years old, it proves how much Fec has grown. Back in 2007, he probably wouldn’t have allowed a percussive thump of static to play out against a heartbeat for four and a half minutes—not without making it painful in some way. This time, his touch is spare and patient. And strangely enough, the lack of vocals on this material highlights what a proficient and attentive arranger Fec has been for a long time now. In spite of his efforts to scuff-up them up, his synths really do sing. A most unlikely late-career coup, Ripe & Majestic lives up to its name.
