Restiform Bodies are a comatose electric psych ghetto tech, r&b trio who all grew up together in the ice and rock of central New Hampshire. After receiving some attention for the bedroom generated recording "oubliette," assembled and sold by hand for $5, Dave, Matt and George left for Oakland to contribute their sound to the anticon massive. It was here the three began to experiment, while also evolving individually as beat makers, knob twiddlers, rappers and singer. David, (passage) the final vocal tentacle of the anticon collective, is the primary Restiform member responsible for the group's rap-sing volley. He has appeared on two anticon releases and his solo LP "the forcefield kids" is available now on anticon. . The chemically enthused tel.jim.jesus (George), compulsively subjugates his gadgetry to render the token restiform car crash sine squall, while the bomarr monk (matt) challenges and amplifies with often masterful tra-ditional hip hop drum programming, underlined by his electro-death stomp alter ego and live analog drum brain accompaniment.Restiform Bodies have toured the country with sole and broken spindles, and have shared the stage with The Arcade Fire, Sage Francis, Atmosphere, Animal Collective, The Unicorns, Themselves, Hrvatski, Barry Andrews (Shriekback), Kid606, Stars As Eyes, Metal Urbain, Andrew Broder, Evolution Control Committee, Sagan, Grand Buffet, Cex, Themselves, and Gold Chains. They have done remixes for Of Montreal, Smyglyssna (Vertical Form), Alan Astor (Mental Monkey). the bomarr monk and tel.jim.jesus have both individually provided production for sole. — anticon.
PASSAGE
« David Bryant, known as Passage, was born in 1979 in Boston, Massachusetts to a steam engineer of the same name and a craftswoman named Carole, then later called New Hampshire home. It was in his six-town district grade school in New Hampshire where Bryant met co-horts, the bomarr monk (Matt Valerio) and teljimjesus (George Chadwick). They were immediately drawn to each other through their taste in music, since few kids around them shared the same interests. By age thirteen Byrant was serving as a vocalist in various punk rock bands, often including Valerio and Chadwick. After various incarnations, the trio would later form restiform bodies. Bryant's musical interest quickly expanded to include hip hop and and then electronic music, ultimately leading him to make a number of "ill-formed purchases of cheesebag equipment." The results of his experimenting with his new equipment were, however, promising. Before long, passage was one of the first bard hoppers to be inspired by the anticon sound, and the last to be absorbed by its machine. After slipping an enthusiastic sole (of anticon) a restiform bodies demo tape at Cincinnati's hip hop festival Scribble Jam, the jingle-core, golden-voiced, passage soon took the dark humor hard way out of New Hampshire. Arriving to California in 2000 with a demo no one could refuse, he and his fellow restiform bodies, telephone jim jesus, and the bomarr monk, quickly proved that they were missing from the anticon swell. With a penchant for darkness, sarcasm and self-loathing, passage embodies what's both awkward and endearing about the cynical nice guy. passage sites his musical influences as Tubeway Army, Joy Division, Geto Boys, Guided By Voices, Wu Tang Clan, De La Soul and Orchestral Maneuvers In The Dark. His songwriting and production reflect and reference a sophisticated and diverse musical palette. Part punk rock, part new wave, part hip hop, and part indie pop, the force field kids is such an amalgamation of influences that it is incomparable to anything before it.passage has toured the United States twice. Once with sole, and once with restiform bodies. He's performed with: DJ Krush, Kid606, Cex, Stars As Eyes, Gold Chains, Broken Spindles, The Unicorns, Blectum from Blechdom, Jay Lesser, Books on Tape, Aceyalone, Abstract Rude, Atmosphere, Animal Collective, Grand Buffet, Dahawney Troof, Barry Andrews (of Shriekback) and in his own words, "one time disgraced the mic at an Herbaliser show when he was eighteen," but then admits "actually, they were kinda into it." In 2002 passage appeared on anticon-we aint fessin (double quotes) CD/10" and on DJ Krush's The Message at the Depth in 2003. — anticon.
Bomarr
Bomarr né Matt Valerio is 1/3 of Anticon collective's Oakland,CA based ghettotech-psy-hop-tronica trio Restiform Bodies. At the crack of the millenium, the three; Passage Telephone Jim Jesus and Bomarr left their New Hampshire homes and set their helms Oakland-wards to (we quote anticon.com), "contribute to the Anticon massive". Valerio and Bryant (David ~Passage) also sometimes perform as Bat Rays, a more ghettotech, and electro-punk version of RB's, distinctive for Bomarr's frenetic drumming and Passage's stage appearance (including wearing a wig, lunatic dancing and playing a Gameboy). Contrary to popular demand, Bat Rays have neither released nor self-released a record yet. Bomarr also made an album with Passage called Moods and Symptoms. The Bomarr Monk's solo discography includes: self-released "Beats Being Broke (cd-r, 2002)", "Fetal Antiseptic Drama Party (3"cd, 2003)" & "Surface Sincerity (dvd-r, 2003)"; "Badload b/w Clovis Heald "Lawnchair" (7"vinyl, 2007)", anticon. -released "Surface Sincerity Soundtrack (7"vinyl, 2004)", a 10 song collection of various remixes, songs from his videos, collaborations and other previously unreleased material called "Freedom From Frightened Air"; he also self-released a live album with Tel.Jim Jesus called "Live At Chapel Of The Chimes" in 2005, and three volumes of his "Wild Xmas With the Bomarr Monk" series.Last but not least, Bomarr was ranked runner up in the first ever Cratedigger Death Match.
It can be downloaded for free at Circle Into Square.
Telephone Jim Jesus
Telephone Jim Jesus, born with the far plainer name George Chadwick, is one of the unlikelier products of tiny, snowy New London, New Hampshire. In that culturally isolated corner of the world, the few artist types, especially those with outcast tastes, tend to huddle around the same fires. After learning the half-handful of scales and chords requisite to punk guitar, TJJ co-founded his first band, a goth and hardcore hybrid called unfit, with two likeminded classmates.It was in unfit that he first tasted sweet stardom in the house parties that his angsty high school band inevitably ruined. That inauspicious start was not for nothing, however: the two other kids with eyeliner streaked on their faces and shredded t-shirts on their backs were Dave Bryant (Passage) and Matt Valerio (Bomarr), who became TJJ’s lifelong comrades-in-arms. Years later, Matt and Dave would move with him to Oakland and the three would share a boxy little room in a warehouse the rappers Sole and Sixtoo had just moved into.
Around ’97, the trio started experimenting with electronic equipment and hip-hop and formed Restiform Bodies, an off-again/on-again project that strangely and wonderfully evokes nothing so much as a midpoint between Joy Division and Latryx. An essential element in the group, Telephone Jim Jesus mans samplers, keyboards, effects processors, bass and guitar, and accounts for much of the group’s highly textured yet confidently melodic quality. His work with Restiform eventually generated a desire to explore musical ideas in a solo setting, and so after a years-long process, heavy on revision, he released his debut, A Point Too Far to Astronaut, on anticon in 2004.
For the past six years, it seems TJJ has been attempting to undo the sin of being born in a small, godforsaken town—he’s twice toured Europe and crossed the U.S. countless times. And his follow-up solo album, Anywhere Out of the Everything, is, as much as anything, a testament to the loneliness, abandon, growth, and madness of a life lived on the road. A European tour with Sole and pedestrian in the summer of 2005 coincided with the break-up of an eight-year relationship, one that stretched from the middle teens to the middle twenties. Without a home to return to in the U.S., on a post-traumatic whim TJJ decided to stay in Europe, and for about four months careened mostly between Sole’s apartment overlooking Gaudi Park in Barcelona and a Lithuanian squat in South London, doing an occasional show to scratch up money for the train. The moment he landed back in North America, he took off through the South and up the East Coast, with stints doing reconstruction work in a Vietnamese community on the Gulf Coast immediately post-Katrina, improvising anti-war demonstrations on Capitol Hill, and for an odd couple of weeks labored and partied in a shuttered hotel on Cape Cod.
Wandering through the overgrown graveyards, thrift store treasuries, and unreconstructed gothic quarters of Western Europe, he found both staggering artistry and usable material in the corridors of the old world. His return voyage through the physical devastation of the Gulf Coast and the moral wreckage of Washington D.C. stirred the impulse to create once more. Anywhere Out of the Everything (the title is a riff on Baudlaire’s “Anywhere Out of the World”) documents this period in great, if fractured, detail, from the cover art collaged out of London’s trash to the variety of voices and sounds captured on Dictaphone and symphonically embedded in the music. So a violin sings in a London tubeway, a muezzin calls the faithful to prayer on a shitty speaker overhead, a crowd croaks out horrific noises, and the voices of he and his fellow travelers recite the desperate poetry inscribed in London tombstones and strain to describe what elsewhere emerges before them. — anticon.
