Black Moth Super Rainbow

Black Moth Super Rainbow come from the woods of western Pennsylvania. An actual, five-member band without the expected laptops and sequencers, BMSR is a psych-electro group in early-'70s electronic clothing. Sometimes the songs feel like pagan rituals in a sugarcoated fairyland, while at other times they're like sad thoughts on the happiest days. All are lovingly played by real people with real hands.

Members prefer to go by aliases and stay away from normal press photos, in an attempt to keep the focus on their music. Led by Tobacco (Vox), who does most of the writing and production, the band also consists of Power Pill Fist (bass and atari), Father Hummingbird (rhodes and monosynth), The Seven Fields Of Aphelion (monosynth) and Iffernaut (drums). By developing their ideas in near-seclusion and without any local influence in Pittsburgh, they come across as feral and unique. Imagine being able to wipe the slate clean and hearing a pop song without ever hearing a pop song before and replacing the types of melodies you're accustomed to hearing with something different. It's kind of like that.

Most people associate sounds like a vocoded vocal with techno and novelty and analog synths with electro, but BMSR is coming from a different place and are trying to recontextualize these sounds. They're categorized in the electronic genre, but their heads are somewhere else.