Tobacco
Fucked Up Friends

LA RECENSIONE

Are you familiar with those '80s horror movies, the ones made with virtually no budget, featuring gelatin blood gushing from the sheriff's car and nylon strings holding up miniature spaceships that invade the earth from the darkest corners of space, terrifying the cheerleader in distress?

Yes?

Well, imagine one where a strange alien lands somewhere in the United States of America, and, in order to communicate with his home planet, first forms a group devoted to the most plasticky and damp electro-friendly psychedelia (the Black Moth Super Rainbow), and then turns to a DIY approach, releasing, in 2008, five years after landing, the disturbing "Fucked Up Friends."

In forty minutes, Our Hero, armed with an infinite array of analog synthesizers and old electronic drum kits, creates, like a good mad scientist, assisted in his strange experiments by colleague Aesop Rock ("Dirt"), monsters and little monsters, which he sadistically unleashes around the poor listener's house, who is soon surrounded by disturbing little voices inviting them to taste the sun ("Hairy Candy") or literally melt by holding the hand of their beloved, probably covered in blood ("Gross Magik"). The grand finale, then, is entrusted to an obese wizard who, covered in grease, smears the walls with the closing credits ("Grease Wizard").

Tobacco, then, with "Fucked Up Friends," provides the soundtrack for the tragic Halloween party we all dream of organizing, and openly and vulgarly seems to want to demonstrate his madness. And I would say he succeeds, brilliantly.