Big Ded pulled us by the ears into a surreal orbit by way of their mind-warping Joybender tape released last year on Embalming Lately. (Around these parts, they had us all spinning as one, so much so that the album earned a place on our 2018 First Quarter Favorites List.)
I offer my humble thanks to the cosmos for the duo are once again set to braid our brainwaves with an upcoming release, Everyone Wants to Kill Me. The album was originally recorded and independently distributed on cassette in 2016, with a digital rerelease forthcoming later this year. Stream the single “Toss Me Like a Daddy” below!
The track features a much brisker, bouncier pace than most of the pieces on Joybender but with a similar attitude towards psychedelically treated vocals that seem to emanate, smokily, from the depths of elaborate bedroom shrines. But vocals here are not simply layered about the music to build funky top lines. Instead, they enmesh, papier-mâché style, with the rhythm to ultimately test it, tease it, and become it.
The lyrical prevalence and play here makes sense considering the way in which Big Ded views the track as “a groundbreaking experiment for us, a lyrical adventure.” An elaborately garbled and joyous journey. Investigations into an early becoming.
Photo by Jean Langkau