It’s not surprising that Talibam! (Matt Mottel on synth, Kevin Shea on drums) is releasing a rap album. Actually, what the fuck am I saying — yes, it is. Despite the genre and conceptual fluidity that Talibam! have exhibited from its early noise/rock/jazz/harmoniacal experiments (Ordination of the Globetrotting Conscripts made #86 on our favorite albums of the 2000s), to dizzying sound experiments with the likes of Peeesseye and Daniel Carter, to boogie-ing in the breeze blocks, to, most recently, the absurdist prog-narrative of Discover AtlantASS, there has still been little to prepare us for Puff Up The Volume — yes, Talibam!’s forthcoming rap album. A statement:
GONG ACCIDENT LEADS TO RAP ALBUM: If you went to rap school, you wasted your money. Talibam!’s #noschoolrap is the result of circumstance. They never studied old or new school rap. Rap found them. In 2009, a falling gong broke Kevin Shea’s bass drum foot in Torino, Italy. In a subsequent recording session, Shea adapted using his other foot on the bass drum. The ensuing beats, composed without samples or loops, inspired Mottel and Shea to flex their symbiotic verbal epiphanies within their self produced floral pop paradise.
The video below is for “Step into the Marina,” the world’s first #noschoolrap single off Puff Up The Volume. It’s about as bizarre and alienating as anything they’ve done yet. The single, backed with “Party Like A Star,” is being released tomorrow for Record Store Day, with Puff Up The Volume due in September, both via Critical Heights.
• Talibam!: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Talibam/102564367491
• Critical Heights: http://www.criticalheights.com