On The Verge

TOBACCO

Pittsburg, Pa.
Analog Mind, Digital Hands
www.myspace.com/tobacco

“All these hillbillies lived really deep in the woods and the tobacco man would come,” says Tom Fec, a.k.a. TOBACCO. “His face was all burned up, he had a burlap sack over it and was almost like a prophet or something.” Fec, the frontman of electro psychedelic band Black Moth Super Rainbow, grabbed his solo moniker from an offbeat character in the movie Redneck Zombies. True to form, Fec habitually covers his face with a mask onstage and sings obscure lyrics through a vocoder while tinkering with a synthesizer. TOBACCO’s aesthetic is a blend of analog and digital, birthing beats that sound like moist sponges sampled over mushy layered synthesizers. The music is coated with lyrics that Fec refers to as “these little splashes of color that can be interpreted in any way.” He creates either in “work mode” or “fun mode.” Letting the fun mode take over entirely was key in crafting the sophomore LP Maniac Meat, which was released this past May. “With [ Maniac Meat ] it was time to go back to when I was making music in high school,” he says, “when no one was listening and nobody fucking cared.”