Here’s a short piece on Black Moth Super Rainbow’s trippy “Sun Lips” from its album Dandelion Gum for NPR’s Song of the Day essay. Click here to listen to the song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC6aAs4kkbY
Vintage Keyboards and a Reverb-Driven Mantra
“Sun Lips” by Black Moth Super Rainbow (Dandelion Gum)
The tripped-out music of Black Moth Super Rainbow is as mysterious as its members’ bizarre personas. Recording under monikers such as Power Pill Fist, Seven Fields of Aphelion and Father Hummingbird, they use vintage keyboards to craft a psychedelic electronic mixture, somewhere between Air and The Black Angels with just a hint of Krautrock.
One of the band’s poppiest and most approachable songs, “Sun Lips” hums along with the churning and ever-present pulse of Mellotron, recalling the opening to “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Still, the glossy, heavily processed vocals chant a reverb-driven mantra with no apparent lyrical meaning. The words may be virtually unintelligible, but the lilting noise explosions and primitive drum breaks do the talking just as well. Like much of Dandelion Gum, “Sun Lips” feels raw, yet it’s also smooth and danceable, with a trance-inducing groove that can sound repetitive in its simplicity. But in those moments when all the separately constructed melodies conform, the effect is mesmerizing.