CHIRP DJ writesCHIRP Welcomes Tobacco to Lincoln Hall on Friday Sept. 30

by Andrew Meriwether

Pittsburgh’s own Tobacco brings his trippy, twisted electronic creations to Lincoln Hall this coming Friday, September 30th.

Tobacco (aka Tom Fec) is currently touring after his latest release, Sweatbox Dynasty. The album is clearly a continuation, but also a refreshing evolution, of Tobacco’s previous heavily modulated synths and vocoded vocals.  Fec began his career as the frontman for the much-acclaimed Black Moth Super Rainbow, which has been consistently releasing albums since 2003. BMSR’s 2007 release Dandelion Gum received praise from critics, and it is around this time that Fec began work on his solo project, Tobacco, with his release of Fucked Up Friends in 2008. While having following of his own, Tobacco found some mainstream popularity after “Stretch Your Face” from 2010’s Manic Meat was used as the theme song for HBO’s Silicon Valley.

Known for his love of analog machines in music composition, Tobacco’s music is a crunchy and gritty representation of millennial nostalgia. Fec’s affinity for the distorted simulacrum of the 90’s makes his music alluring—and even danceable—yet is simultaneously disturbing. On Sweatbox Dynasty, Fec takes the use of analog a step further, choosing to record all the instruments onto tape before beginning the mixing process. This gives the whole album a visceral and dynamic quality, which can often be lacking in much of the overly compressed and produced music of the electronica genre. It will certainly be interesting to see how Tobacco recreates this sonic atmosphere in his live set this coming Friday.