The Octopus Project and Black Moth Super Rainbow 'The House of Apples and Eyeballs' album

"The House of Apples & Eyeballs" is not a split, but a year-long, full-length collaboration by both bands. The Octopus Project is known and loved for their uncategorizable broken-guitars-meet-samplers-meet-drums-meet-drum machines sound, while the musical island of Black Moth Super Rainbow would rather play their songs in the woods and not let you know if their gear is broken or working just fine. Holding hands from Austin to Pittsburgh, they set out to create one of the wilder pop records of the year. For anyone familiar with both bands, may you find yourself at peace with this dream record. But know that not all is as it seems, and the challenge of figuring out which band played which parts may sometimes be impossible. While a couple tracks did make it to the record in their original, one-band form, most were passed back and forth for several rounds of dismemberment, rearrangement, and augmentation. The result overflows with sonic treats: cut-up beats and vocoder melodies collide with huge, distorted riffs. A theremin orchestra descends into layered steel guitars before all is dissolved in a wash of hazy synths.

The Octopus Project appears courtesy of Peek-A-Boo Records. They have wowed audiences in 2006 at Coachella, and were named one of Rolling Stone's breakout bands of SXSW. They will soon be going into the studio to record their very highly anticipated third album in 2007.

Black Moth Super Rainbow lives on Graveface Records, and although known as somewhat of an enigma, has come out of the forest in 2006 to play at the request of bands like Of Montreal and The Black Angels. They have been recording their third full length album that will be released when the time is just right.

OP Bio:
With their second album, One Ten Hundred Thousand Million, The Octopus Project has added a few more crayons to the fire: it's the same band that produced 2002's Identification Parade -- beat machines and keyboards stacked against drum kits and guitars -- but the quiet parts are quieter and prettier ("Bruise," "Lots More Stairs"), and the loud parts are way fucking louder ("Exit Counselor," "Six Feet Up").

Toto, Josh, and Yvonne have been at this for a while now, accompanied lately by Brandon Durham in the guitarist's seat. In the two years between records they've taken the barely controlled chaos of their live show (often augmented with masks, balloons and bizarre party favors) from coast to coast, playing many hundreds of shows and being lucky enough to share the stage with folks like Four Tet, The Shins, Deerhoof, The Dismemberment Plan, and Trail of Dead.

When it came time to record, the band had a clear idea of what they wanted - a full-color studio concoction injected with the energy of a club full of people dancing to some crazy noise. They got some help from friends who played instruments (horns & strings) and recorded them in nice studios. The band then extensively reworked the tunes, adding such necessary features as the sound of a five-story concrete stairwell, an ususpecting New Orleans marching band, guitars through megaphones and lots of tamborines.

In 2002, Identification Parade received a very complimentary review from a Greek website which, poorly translated, says a lot about the high standards the band had in mind for this new record:

"Their music is not distant and colourless, but heat enriched with 32-roasts colours. Absolutely fresh, most creative extremists. I have the impression that next "kombote'hnima" post rock it will not come from the collective of Godspeed or from the turtles of John McEntire, but from their Octopus Project (with my particular statement, I am ready -- almost motionless -- in order to it falls fire me it burns...)."

The Octopus Project feels that they've met the challenge and delivered their "kombote'hnima" (whatever that is), and they submit for your approval One Ten Hundred Thousand Million.

BMSR Bio:
Black Moth Super Rainbow comes from the woods of Western Pennsylvania. An actual, 5 member band not comprised of the expected laptops and sequencers, BMSR is a psyche-pop group in early '70s electronic clothing. Some songs feel like local folk tales of witches in the forest filtered through a brightly saturated japanese candy store. Some are like pagan rituals in a sugarcoated fairyland. Others are like sad thoughts on the happiest days..

All played and lovingly assembled by real people with real hands. BMSR lives and makes music in their own lollipop neon folktale world.

"Dandelion Gum" (2007) is Black Moth Super Rainbow at their most dynamic and fully-realized. Songs that are built to stick in your head for hours meet textures that are impossible to scrape off your teeth. You might not even realize that the sunny melody you're humming to yourself all day has so many layers of hidden melodies behind it - all hummable as well. Recorded onto tape reels with an oldschool battery powered field recorder and assembled with some primitive samplers and computer software, "Dandelion Gum" feels as colorful and gooey as its name suggests. In most cases, drums were recorded live to tape and then chopped and stitched back together without the help of a sequencer. The synths, novatron flutes, and bass were all played by people, and sometimes bounced through tape generations, gardens, and walls to make them as hairy as possible. It's as accessible of a record as it is abstract and as bright on the surface as it is moody underneath.

BMSR's first sad/happy/nostalgia-for-something-that-never-existed record, "Falling Through A Field" (2003) was 3 years of four-track and sampler recordings that shows how the band came from an almost folk beginning. Printed initially in a limited quantity of 500, the disc has been out of print since it first came out. A re-release on Graveface is coming.

Their sophomore record, "Start A People" (2004) was about recreating the sounds of childhood public broadcast televison and applying them to the Black Moth Super Rainbow formula. It's a blissful, hazy, fuzzy record that can make you feel good whether you were a kid in 1982 or not. The concept of "Start A People" is the face BMSR is best known for and a thread that runs through everything they do.

Putting together the live show, they started developing around this time as the extremely psychedelic pop band they are today. Echoplex freakouts and gong smashes with drums spinning all over the place are part of the repetoire now. Noise plays with melody, and old synths that aren't used by anyone anymore might help you remember why it can be fun to wiggle or jump or cry.

Black Moth Super Rainbow lives on Graveface Records, and although known as somewhat of an enigma, has come out of the forest in 2006 to play at the request of bands like Of Montreal and The Black Angels. They have released a wild full-length collaborative record with The Octopus Project and are working with such diverse artists as Dreamend, Laura Burhenn (Georgie James), and Anticon's Passage on their future projects.

"...Like opening a bottle of soda without knowing it's been shaken wildly." -Foxy Digitalis (2006)

"...References the past without emulating it, and manages to look forward to the future while sounding like absolutely nothing else from the present." -Imageyenation (2006)

"Surely something beyond much of the music created today" -Delusions of Adequacy (2006)

"This may make little sense, but you have to experience their soothing, exhilarating and mysterious, "tranquilizer meets energy drink" universe. You will be affected and that's a guarantee." -Music-News.com (2006)

"Sprawling and ambitious, and very much enjoyable to listen to no matter what your musical proclivity." -Dusted (2005)

"...It's hard to imagine that any other artists are treading ground anywhere near this. Hell, it really doesn't matter anyways - because if anyone was, it sure as hell couldn't be as good as this." -Delusions of Adequacy (2004)

"...I personally think this band are a real find, and surely are due a higher profile in this country." -BBC Collective (2004)

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The Octopus Project and Black Moth Super Rainbow - The House of Apples and Eyeballs