They’re ghostly. They’re funky. Their finely-honed-brass-and-woodwind-enhanced musical arrangements are "orchestral." 

Of course I'm talking about Ghost Funk Orchestra (GFO) a group that's one of the leading purveyors of “ghost funk” today and if you think I’m in the habit of making up genres willy-nilly based solely on a band’s name I say to you au contraire, mon square because “ghost funk” has been around since at least the early ‘70s and it’s long been overdue for a revival and an update...

...a revival/update that's taken off over the past decade with ghost funk group like GOAT, El Michels Affair, 79.5, Say She She, and of course GFO--the latter having just re-released their inaugural pair of "extended play” records (Night Walker and Death Waltz, both released in 2016 on Brooklyn-based King Pizza imprint Ramble Records) in newly remastered form on Loveland, Ohio-based Karma Chief/Colemine Records available for the first time as a single disc.

Fronted by musical polymath Seth Applebaum, GFO started as a auteurist studio project but soon blossomed into a full-on, well, orchestra—a crackerjack live unit who this past Friday melted off most of the faces of those in attendance at their Bowery Ballroom concert opening for Pacific Northwest-based pastoral-psychedelia folk-rock dream-poppers La Luz (we strongly advise you dive into their 2021 eponymous LP asap if you haven’t already).

But what exactly is ghost funk, you may ask, and where did it come from? A classic example of “hey you got your peanut butter in my chocolate!” type amalgamation--given that ghosts are etherial undead creatures inducing dread and fear, while funk is down ’n’ dirty, highly corporal music inducing joy and sexiness--once these two elements were brought into perfect alchemical balance in the early 1970s the result was such post-peace-and-love haunted funk classics such as Sly Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On, James Brown’s The Big Payback, and Lafayette Afro Rock Band’s Malik...

…which is not to mention all the ghost funk offshoots that soon followed ranging from Fela Kuti’s revolutionary Afrobeat anthems to Lee Perry’s haunted Black Ark dub sides, or from Teddy Lasry’s ambient "funky ghost" jazz-funk Gallic instrumentals to, yes, Austin Robert’s funky bubblegum ditties as heard in all the "running from the ghouls but really it's just a guy in a mask" chase scene in the original run of Scooby Doo. All of which work their way into GFO's sound at one point or another and when it comes to the latter the live-show fronting vocal duo of Romi O. (PowerSnap) and Megan Mancini (The Rizzos) do arguably put across a Velma and Daphne dynamic on stage.

But I digress. The first of the two Ghost Funk Orchestra EPs, Night Walker, opens on a ghostly faded-in ambient soundscape featuring the ghostly sounds of a train entering a station (full of ghosts, no doubt!) joined to a slow-paced, echo-laden ghostly groove that slowly fades out leading up to the next track “Brownout" which serves as a heat-hazed serenade to steamy bedrooms and sleepless nights in the midst of a power outage (always a ghostly experience!) sung in sultry Spanish tones.

But despite the five mentions of "ghosts" in the paragraph above it's the third track “Dark Passage” which most indelibly gives up the ghost funk with its wet-reverbed, dubbed-out drum groove and rubbery bass and ping-ponged, fuzzed-out electric guitar and Chakachas style “Jungle Fever” stop-start dynamics minus the cowbell and Dutch moaning, all overlain with a John Barry worthy spy theme melody (see also: "Death Waltz") plus a couple funked up solos (on guitar and groovy flute) and if you were to happen across a funky ghost floating down an abandoned late-night side street I'd be surprised if they weren't listening to this track on their headphones.

And then next we get the noir-drenched shimmering slow-gaited strut of “Night Walker” and then the even more literally noirish “Demon Demon” with its Dashiell Hammett book-on-top style recitation (as shadows lengthen in the asphalt homeland / the city winds down / the once vibrant streets / are now a home for ghosts) over a shimmying rhythm section and ghostly guitars treated with heavy echo and trembling tremolo and it turns out that even in the midst of the metropolis demons live off from fresh flesh so be careful when you’re out there carousing after midnight looking to get funked up.

And hey I could walk you through every track on Night Walker / Death Waltz and it'd be fun and all. But I got other things to do plus as I was putting the final touches on this writeup Ghost Funk Orchestra went and dropped a brand new song and music video called “Scatter” (video above directed by Greg Hanson of King Pizza Records, see how we've come full circle here!) which is the first advance single off their upcoming third full-length A New Kind of Love slated for release on 10/28 just a few days before Halloween and how ghostly is all of that, zoinks?! (Jason Lee)
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Ghost Funk Orchestra is currently on tour in the Land of the Great Lakes hitting Detroit tonight (8/30) and Grand Rapids on Thursday (9/1) with dates soon thereafter in Burlington, Virginia; Saranac Lake, New York; and Ridgewood, Queens.

je'raf has released their second single of 2022, "PUA", via Don't Panic Records. The new single features a contribution from Joshua Virtue and combines Jazz, Funk, and Hip Hop. This follows "Clean Your Dick" which was released back in March and both singles are the follow-up to the group's 2020 debut album Throw Neck.

This is work of Brianna Tong (vocals), pt Bell (vocals, piano), Ishmael Ali (guitar, electronics, cello, piano, vocals), Wills McKenna (saxophone, flute), David Fletcher (trombone), Eli Namay (bass, vocals), and Bill Harris (drums, percussion, vocals, piano, Wurlitzer).

When I first heard “Forget Me Not” on a radio show a couple weeks ago I immediately thought to myself “Wow, I never knew the Salsoul Orchestra cut a slinky, stripped-down, clavinet-led four minutes of funk with vocals by erotic thespian Andrea True and/or select members of Sister Sledge and/or select members of Silver Convention, with Johnny Pacheco from the Fania All Stars supplying some nice flutter tonguing on the flute (not a bad skill for any guy—or gal—to have ammirite ladies?) plus a groovy solo toward the end and really who doesn’t like a nice groovy flute solo and if you don’t like a nice groovy flute solo then I don’t want to know you until you seek therapy.” This is what I thought to myself.

So there where I thought I’d made quite the old school “deep cut” discovery it turns out, better yet, I’d discovered (random stumbled upon) an entirely new school of lush groovy funkitude that’s centered right here in the borough of Brooklyn NYC, with a significant assist by Loveland, Ohio-based Colemine Records, because “Forget Me Not” is the debut single by the Brooklyn-based-female-fronted-seven-piece-deep-friend-soul-combo-platter called Say She She—a group whose officially ensorsed alternate spelling is “C’est Chi-Chi” given that any perceived similarities between SSS and the disco era’s most legendary band or with the classic LP C’est Chic are probably not unwelcome, nor unfounded, as “Forget Me Not” amply checks off the elegant coquette box of that album’s “I Want Your Love” and next I’m eagerly awaiting SSS’s take on the “Le Freak” aesthetic.

Which isn’t to say that Say She She are mimics, more like the curators of a rich array of influences taken apart and reassembled. Along these lines “Forget Me Not” is what I’m guessing the “parallel universe ‘80s” would’ve sounded like if Jimmy Carter had been re-elected president and if a bunch of drunken meatheads hadn’t burned a pile of disco records on a baseball field and if the nation’s youth hadn’t been persuaded by Music Television to adopt synthesizers, parachute pants, and asymmetrical haircuts en masse. 

But enough about alternative realities who the heck are Say She She exactly in real life? The tripartite vocal front is made up of one-time Londonite Piya Malik (79.5, El Michels Affair) whose great uncle was a prominent Bollywood music producer and who met Sabrina Mileo Cunningham (Denny Love) because the two were living in the same Lower East Side apartment building and heard each other singing through the walls and then once they joined up with Nya Parker Gazelle the vocal chemistry was complete. 

On the instrumental side of things Say She She is comprised of the wah-wah stylings of electric guitarist Matty McDermott (Black Acid, Coyote, Nymph), the funky strutting keys of Mike Sarason (Combo Lulo), the finger-slapping phat bass tones of Preet Patel (The Frigtnrs, RIP Dan Klein), and the in-the-pocket drive of drummers Andy Bauer (Twin Shadow among many other projects) and Ben Borchers (The Shacks), and last but certainly not least the groovy flute of the multi-talented Mike Sarason (see above).

So if you’re feelin’ the vibe be sure to keep an eye peeled for Say She She’s next moves. And don’t be surprised if one of their next songs is in Hindi or if they come out with a debut album this summer full of more raw analogue slabs of sonically transmitted smooth funkitude which even though I'm trying is not quite as good a tongue-twister as the title of this piece. (Jason Lee) 

 Fresh off a nearly three year hiatus from performing in front of audiences, the Knocks arrived in Austin to perform as a funk/dance outlier in an otherwise EDM-dominated lineup at Illfest. The duo comprising the Knocks, Ben ‘B-roc’ Ruttner and James ‘JPatt’ Patterson, were comfortably sipping tequila out of red cups in their backstage camper trying to break into their old pre-show ritual when we sat down with them for a post-pandemic breakdown. The New York based master collaborators spoke on their much-delayed upcoming album, Nu Disco’s resurgence, their Indie-Pop beginnings and why the Knocks might be considered the ‘Nas of Disco’.

It’s good to have you back in Austin!  You came here a lot for SXSW, what do you like doing here?

JPatt:

I don't know. I don't think we really have a routine. We just come and kick it, honestly.

B-Roc:

Yeah. Austin, for us, used to be SXSW always, for years.

So a lot of barbecue.

JPatt:

Yeah.

B-Roc:

Yeah. And that's very cliche I feel, but that was the thing, but we miss Southwest.

JPatt:

Seeing the homies.

B-Roc:

Yeah. Now we've got some homies down here. It feels like a lot of people have moved here from places like LA, and New York, and stuff. So we have a lot of transplant friends here.

 B-Roc:

But this is our first festival since COVID, and even before COVID, we hadn't played a festival

 JPatt:

I don't think we've ever played a festival here.

 B-Roc:

In Austin? I don't know. Yeah, other than SXSW

 JPatt:

Other than SXSW.

I was going to say, have you guys forgot how to play live? It's been a minute.

 B-Roc:

We were just talking about that. It's like our first time on a festival stage. It's been so long.

 JPatt:

We're not going to be playing live though. We're just DJing.

 B-Roc:

Yeah. We're just DJing.

So you've had a few DJ sets to tune up, but the tour's this spring.

B-Roc:

Yeah.

 JPatt:

Yeah.

Awesome. Is there anybody here that you'd look around that you'd like to see? I know it's not your typical group.

B-Roc:

I saw Phantogram was on there, which I really like Phantogram. Besides that, it's a lot of bass music, which is not totally our thing, more heavy stuff. So hopefully we'll stick out a little bit by playing a little bit more funky and groovy stuff. It should be fun. But yeah, we're just excited to just play a festival again. It's been a while.

 JPatt:

Yeah. It just feels good to be back.

 B-Roc:

We were just saying, "We were nervous coming over here and it's like our first time. It's been so long." But then once you're back in the trailer, you've got some tequila, the old feeling comes back.

 JPatt:

Speaking of tequila...

You guys mentioned that, at one point, you wanted to be like the Neptunes, and mainly produce artists. If you had remained on that track, who do you think you'd be producing, or who would you want to produce today?

B-Roc:

That's a good question.

 JPatt:

Someone that isn't out today. Probably some new artists that were...

 B-Roc:

I don't know. That's a good question. The cool thing is that we started off wanting to do that, be more producers in the room with artists. And then we got sick of that game, because getting into it, it's a lot of following the rules of "All right, we got this thing. We want it to sound like Britney Spears meets fucking whoever/whatever."

 JPatt:

It's a lot of call sheets.

 B-Roc:

And it's a lot of pitching stuff and getting let down, so that kind of turned us to "Let's just make our own shit." And the goal always was, "Let's make our own shit until those people that want pop songs and stuff come to us for the sound that they know from The Knocks," which has finally now been happening, which is cool. We did that Purple Disco song. We got a song with Kungs coming out that we did for him. So a lot of these other electronic artists are coming to us, whether it's a collab, or just helping them with records and more pop stuff. We did the Carly Rae Jepsen song.

 JPatt:

It's a long road.

 B-Roc:

Yeah, but it's now that people... They come to us for us, and not try to get... You and 1000 other producers are going to pitch this song.

 JPatt:

It's a long game, but it's worth it, because now people probably are like, "Oh, we want a song that sounds like that Knocks thing."

 B-Roc:

Yeah. So it worked out for the best for sure, but now we're definitely trying to get back into doing more of that, now that we're getting older, and not trying to tour as much, and just trying to be in the studio more.

Are there any unknown artists you discovered during pandemic?

B-Roc:

I discovered one, yeah. A girl named Juliana Madrid. She's actually a Texas local. She's from Dallas and she's 20 years old. Insanely talented singer/songwriter chick. So total different vibe, but that kept me very busy.

 JPatt:

I didn't discover anyone.

 B-Roc:

We actually met her in Dallas at a show. She came to a Knocks show, was dragged by her friends and ended up... Found her on Instagram and kept in touch, and now signing a record deal and everything. So it's cool.

Awesome. I know you're into jazz fusion. You mentioned you're getting into Tavares during pandemic. Have you geeked out...

B-Roc:

You've done your research.

 JPatt:

I think the Tavares version of More Than A Woman's better than the Bee Gee's version.

That’s a hot take. So you guys recorded the new album two years ago and you've had two years to just pick at it and go through it. How's that process been different?

B-Roc:

It's been nice. It gives you more time to sit on stuff. Usually it would be like, "We got the single out. We got to finish the album and get it done." So you just commit, which is also something to be said about that, but being able to really live with something, not listen to it for three months and then open it back up and be like, "This is great for me, and change this."

 JPatt:

And we got a chance to add new songs.

 B-Roc:

Yeah, last minute we added a couple. I don't know. It kind of makes us want to spend that much time on every album.

 JPatt:

You realize guys like Nas take like seven years to put out an album.

 B-Roc:

Because we're basically Nas.

 JPatt:

Because we're Nas. We're the Nas of disco.

I don't know. Did you guys read that book? Meet Me in the Bathroom? It's all about-

B-Roc:

I did, yeah.

 JPatt:

Yeah.

If you guys had that group in New York, what groups or artists... I know Neon Gold would be heavily involved.

B-Roc:

Totally, yeah.

But who would be the interviews in your book?

B-Roc:

Oh, that's a good question. We came in at the very tail end of that scene. I remember going to parties and seeing the Interpol guys and shit. But our scene was probably more the Neon Gold scene.

 JPatt:

The Americans.

 B-Roc:

It was a lot of the indie pop stuff, like Ellie Goulding.

 JPatt:

Yeah, Ellie Goulding.

 B-Roc:

Marina and the Diamonds.

 JPatt:

Neon Indian.

 B-Roc:

Yeah, that kind of whole... It was the bloghouse days.

 JPatt:

Or French Horn Rebellion.

 B-Roc:

Bag Raiders.

 JPatt:

Those are still going.

They're still going. I read that you're doing a Cannons collab and a Cold War Kids collab.

B-Roc:

Yeah.

Any other artists that are popping up on the album?

B-Roc:

Donna Missal. I don't know if you know her. She's awesome. She's on the next single. Who else we got in there? Another song with Powers, who was on our big song, Classic. And then Tee. That song already came out. I'm trying to think who else? We did a song with a guy from Coin, the band.

 JPatt:

This is our first record without a rap [crosstalk 00:06:18] rap feature.

 B-Roc:

Yeah, we always have a rapper.

 JPatt:

We usually had Method Man, and Cam'ron, and Wyclef.

 B-Roc:

We went back to our roots of more indie dance stuff. We feel like a lot of people right now, between Dua Lipa basically making a new disco album, and Doja Cat, all these people doing disco pop. It's like, "Wait. We've been doing this for 10 years."

 JPatt:

A lot of people are like, "Did you produce the new Dua song?" And we're just-

 B-Roc:

When that Dua song came out, I got so many text messages. So we're like, "Let's go back and do some of this, because this is our bread and butter." And I feel like for a while, we were almost too early on it. People weren't ready for it, and now it's top 40. So now it's like, "Fuck. Now if we put this album out, people are going to think we're chasing."

 JPatt:

It's good that our fans have been fans of us their whole lives, so they're going to know.

 B-Roc:

They're going to know that we're not jumping on the bandwagon.

 JPatt:

They'll educate the rest of the people.

 B-Roc:

But it feels like our first album, in the sense that there's a lot more features and there's a lot of alternative features, which is cool.

Nu disco's had waves throughout the years. Would you say there's another renaissance now? Because you mentioned Dua Lipa kind of brought it back with Future Nostalgia.

B-Roc:

Yeah, I think that bloggy era is kind of coming back in general. Everything happens I feel like in 10 years, in cycles. But not only just the blog, not the disco stuff even. I think disco's influence and stuff is just always going to be around. It just never goes away.

 JPatt:

Disco is like funk. It's never going to-

 B-Roc:

Yeah, it's very broad. But I do think that whole electroclash vibe is coming back. I don't know if you heard that band, Wet Leg.

 JPatt:

A lot of faster-

 B-Roc:

Where it's almost like Peaches or some shit, where it's kind of talky-singy, and punky "yeah, yeah, yeahs" kind of thing, which I love and I'm excited for that. It's like dance rock, which I'm really into, and our Cold War Kids song reminds me of that. It kind of sounds like a Rapture song or something. That was band was a huge one in New York for us.

 JPatt:

Which is still bloghouse. It's not bloghouse. It's blog-era.

 B-Roc:

Yeah. It was just that era of stuff that didn't play on the radio, but was still big, and you had to know about it to know about it.

When you guys first started out, you were playing in a band for a guy named Samuel.

B-Roc:

Oh, wow. You went deep.

Whatever happened to Samuel? Didnt he help the Knocks get started.

B-Roc:

He's in Mexico.

 JPatt:

He's in Guatemala.

 B-Roc:

Guatemala, sorry. Yeah. He was actually staying at my house a couple months ago.

 JPatt:

Just chilling. Same old fucking Sam.

 B-Roc:

Yeah, he doesn't make music anymore, but he's actually a tattoo artist and visual artist.

 JPatt:

Same old fucking Sam.

 B-Roc:

One of the oldest, and we owe a lot to him.

 JPatt:

Yeah, he's the man.

 B-Roc:

Finding him inspired us to lean into the pop music stuff and get better as producers, so it kind of broke up stuff. And it was our first time dealing with a major label. I was his manager when I was like 19 years old. We got him signed to Columbia Records. We had no idea what we were fucking doing. We went to LA and we're like, "We made it!" And then he got dropped. So it was a great learning experience, the whole thing. It kind of prepared us for our career I think. Not to belittle his, but…

Absolutely. Is there anything about touring that you guys absolutely hate that you're not looking forward to?

B-Roc:

I love that question. I could go on for a day.

 JPatt:

Well, there's touring and then there’s touring.

 B-Roc:

I have a dog now, so it's harder. I got a pandemic dog.

 JPatt:

I don't really love being away from home for that long. I don't.

 B-Roc:

We did a three-month-long tour with Justin Bieber.

 JPatt:

I hated it by the end. I was just so sad.

 B-Roc:

It was so long. We were in Europe on a bus for three months.

 JPatt:

It was a long time to be gone.

 B-Roc:

Yeah. But I think home sickness is the worst part. Or the downtime, honestly. It feels like you kill so much time.

 JPatt:

You're not really doing anything.

 B-Roc:

Just sitting around waiting to play a two-hour-long show.

 JPatt:

Then you get to these cities and everyone's like, "Oh, my god. You're so well-traveled." And I'm really not. I've seen every green room in America, but not I've not seen anything else.

 B-Roc:

Yeah, I just sit up my phone all day long, and I watch a lot of TV. So for the last tour, we tried to be a little more productive and I was definitely making way more music on the road, which was the first time doing that. And some good shit came out of it actually, probably. But yeah, the downtime is tough.

So you're not writing on the road ever?

B-Roc:

Not really. Like I said, the last tour I think was the first time. We started the All About You beat there, which is our Foster The People song. And then I made so much shit that's just sitting on my hard drive. It almost feels like you want to do it to be productive, but it's hard to get in the zone when you're in the back of a bus, freezing, and you have the headphones on, and you're-

 JPatt:

Or you just don't do it. I had my stuff with me here. I was like, "We're going to have a whole day basically before we were going to the fest." I slept all day. I haven't done anything.

 B-Roc: Yeah, a lot of sleeping. You're tired and hungover.

And so, how you brought collaborators in for this last album, you just rented a house in LA.

B-Roc:

That's how we started, yeah.

And it was just, "Drop by if you can make it," or how did you reach out to them or bring them into it?

B-Roc:

It was just all over.

 JPatt:

All over. Some homies that we just know from being around, and other people, we'd reach out to their manager.

 B-Roc:

But that was our first time doing it.

 JPatt:

That was our first time doing it like that, though.

 B-Roc:

Yeah. We always would have a studio we'd have to go to and meet them. And it feels weird because it's like, "We've got to break for lunch." When they come to you and you're like in this house, it feels-

 JPatt:

You're kind of just living.

 B-Roc:

Yeah, it feels a little bit more organic. And you can stay all night and you're just working, and wake up in the morning, still working on the song. And it was cool. It was a really good vibe. And it was really fun because we had a couple sessions that we were really looking forward to, which was the TEED session, where you love TEED and we really wanted that to go well. And the Muna session.

 And those were the first two days, and we fucking got both those songs that are now in our album out of those two days. It feels good when you have an idea in your head, how it's going to go, and it actually happens. A lot of times, you put this on the pedestal: "We're going to get with Muna. It's going to like this." And then you don't fucking get it. So it felt good when you're actually in the room with the artist and it works out.

Do you think recording in LA influenced the album?

B-Roc:

We actually record a lot in LA. It's just so many people out there. I don't know if it influences it.

 JPatt:

I don't personally love LA.

 B-Roc:

I think the only thing that influences is having the house.

 JPatt:

Just having the house.

So your album,New York Narcotic, was recorded in LA?

B-Roc:

Yeah, a lot of it actually. That's the irony of that. But now I have a house Upstate, so we're going to be recording a lot more up there, which is nice. So we can kind of do the same process, but do it in New York.

How was working with Sofi Tukker?

B-Roc:

They're in Austin right now.

Yeah. So you guys didn't get down to Brazil for the “Brazilian Soul” music video?

B-Roc:

No. You heard that story. You read out. Yeah, that was awful. We were at the airport with our bags.

 JPatt:

It was a visa situation.

 B-Roc:

So that was a manager fuck up.

 JPatt:

It was a visa thing. No one told us we needed like six visas.

 B-Roc:

Nobody told us we needed a fucking travel visa. So they were down there, and we were on our way and then couldn't.

 JPatt:

We ended up shooting our part in a Brazilian restaurant.

 B-Roc:

So we shot it at a Brazilian restaurant.

 B-Roc:

Yeah. They're old friends. We go way back. They're actually coming to the after party tonight.

Cannons is a band that just had one of their first national tours. Now they have their headlining tour scheduled. How did you link up with them?

B-Roc:

That song was completely remote, the pandemic song. So we had the beat and the song started, and we had been trying to work with them because they're so in our vein, cool disco stuff, and that song was all over the radio and I couldn't not hear it. The big one. It was a really easy process. They're super nice. She's a sweetheart and just killed it. Trying to play some more shows with them, because it feels like a good fit.

And then last question is just about your side projects, they both came out of pandemic, if you want to talk a little bit them.

B-Roc:

Yeah, mine's Holiday87, and it's a lofi electronic thing, a lot of samples. I was really influenced by people like Avalanches and Cowboy Slim, and more that real heavy, sample-based stuff. And I really love really borderline-emo, emotional stuff. So this was like my escape.

And JPatt was doing his thing with his songs. When we were working alone, I'd come and bring some super emo song, and he'd come and bring some really housey things. And we'd be like, "Neither these work for The Knocks." The Knocks thing, we really wanted to hone in on "We're going to make this indie-disco stuff. This is the sound."

 JPatt:

We have a sound now.

 B-Roc:

We used to try to make it fit.

 JPatt:

We started off as just "Oh, whatever sounds good."

 B-Roc:

Anything we make is a Knocks song. And then we learned the hard way that that doesn't always... You've got to kind of stick to your thing. So this is a great way. We started our own label and we're able to just get that release of "I want to go make some weird fucking six-minute-long downbeat song."

 JPatt:

My shit's James Patterson.

 B-Roc:

And he can make his heavy bangers that are a little bit more... Not as funk.

 JPatt:

It's a little more heavy than the Knocks, but it's just more DJ music. I guess a good reference would be Moody Men or Frankie Knuckles, those kinds of guys. It's not grow house. It's not tech house.

 JPatt:

There's real instruments in it, but it's feels more classic house.

 B-Roc:

Yeah. It's just nice. It really feels good to have a place for that stuff to live now.

JPatt:

Yeah.

What's the new label called?

JPatt:

Blacklight.

Awesome. Well, thanks so much for your time, guys. I'm looking forward to the show.

B-Roc:

Thank you, man. Great questions. It was nice to talk to someone who read up on things. It's like, "How did you get your name?"

Photo Credit: Grace Dupuy

Guerilla Toss is a band that specializes in dance-punk-acid-house-party-rock anthems that sound like they’ve been beamed to this planet straight from the Big Red Spot of Jupiter because much like that celestial “beauty mark” (actually a raging centuries-old storm bigger than the entire planet Earth) their music is a swirling sonic vortex that pulls in all manner of sonic space junk from the surrounding atmosphere which gets all mashed up and mutated in the eye of the storm re-emerging as a molten musical liquid metal that gets shot back into space via electromagnetic waves audible through this planet’s primitive stereo receivers and equalizers and discontinued iPods. 

Granted, this may sound like a crackpot analogy but it’s supported by the band’s own lyrical exegesis on songs like “Meteorological” (from 2018’s Twisted Crystal), “Can I Get the Real Stuff” (from 2017’s GT Ultra), and “367 Equalizer” (from 2014’s Infinity Cat Series). And you can hear the interplanetary vibes with your own ears just by putting on Guerilla Toss’s latest single “Cannibal Capital” (music video directed by Lisa Schatz) from their upcoming Sub Pop debut full-length Famously Alive due out on 3/25, a song that seems to mix and mutate the various stages of the band’s own musical history—from the noisy experimentalism of their early releases to the mutant funk of their more recent DFA releases—a song that by their own account “makes everything sensory.”

The song opens with a sound-collage intro that appears to incorporate the sounds of a Merzbow cassette being eaten by malfunctioning tape deck, a leaky toilet, an air rifle, and a cat suffering from intestinal distress—all in the first 15 seconds or so. It just goes to show how much Guerilla Toss takes making everything sensory very seriously indeed. 

Meanwhile a twitchy-tail-shaking-percolating-mid-tempo groove emerges from the sonic murk and while it seems to vanquish it at first the sonic murk keeps seeping back in around the edges with squelching synths and blasts of power chords and so forth thus setting up a disintegration/reintegration dialectic that fits perfectly with the song’s opening lyric (“you need help / melt in every dimension”) and it’s not the only case of lyrical/musical synchronicity either like later where vocalist Kassie Carlson poses the question “can I escape gracefully?” and the vocals veer out of time on cue escaping the rhythm of the tightly wound groove for a few moments.

Closing arguments: On “Cannibal Capital” Guerilla Toss have proven once again that pop will eat itself and and that there's a cultural capital to cannibals just as Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade observed back in 1928 when he wrote the Cannibalist Manifesto which advocated the notion that “Brazil’s history of cannibalizing other cultures was its greatest strength and had been the nation’s way of asserting independence over European colonial culture” a notion that went on to inspire the late ‘60s art and music movement movement called Tropicália—whose best-known proponents were Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Tom Zé, and Os Mutantes which literally means The Mutants—likewise frooted in a collage aesthetic where the "sacred enemy" is disgested and transformed, and with all this in mind I'd say it’s fair to say that Guerilla Toss are our modern-day tropicalistas, i.e. modern primitives, likely transplanted from outer space no less, or Boston, one or the other, sent to Earth/NYC to absorb our musical traditions "body snatchers style" and spit 'em back out in capitvatingly mutated form. (Jason Lee)