Restiform Bodies Are Back I can’t think of a more appropriate way to usher in the return of Fangbear, than by celebrating the return of one of our favorite groups. After years of waiting for Oakland, by way of New Hampshire’s Restiform Bodies to put out a new record, I was beginning to lose hope. Not to say that these fellas haven’t been busy. Dave, Matt and George (aka Passage, Bomarr and Telephone Jim Jesus, respectively) have all had proper solo releases since their self-titled LP, back in 2000 2001 (thanks bomarr - ages ago nonetheless). In September, they will release their Anticon debut record, TV Loves You Back. If their first single is any indication of the new, battle-hardened, grown-up RB’s, we are in for some wonky, electro, ghetto-tech, rap greatness. I’m pumped. Posted on: August 21st, 2008
RESTIFORM BODIES - “Bobby Trendy Addendum” from TV Loves You Back (Anticon) Hip-Hop // Out Now Remember flamboyant, antagonistic fashion designer/interior decorator Bobby Trendy from The Anna Nicole Smith Show? Restiform Bodies—the Anticon second-stringer supergroup of Passage, Now, Bomaar Monk and Telephone Jim Jesus—are reuniting and are resurrecting him, too, on “Bobby Trendy Addendum.” But they could just as easily be raking any number of other bitchy celebs or quasi-celebs over the coals here. In other words, if Bobby Trendy didn’t exist, they might’ve just as easily invented him. The ear-teasing Noah’s Arcade-on-fire electro-noise crunch of “Bobby Trendy Addendum” is pure pop-cult concept, overwhelming Information Age bombast as constructed reality. The song sounds like living today feels: too much, too fast, too loud, too bright, nothing making any definite sense—but like watching Anna Nicole, it’s guilty-pleasure, button-slamming fun, you know? It’s excitement in excess. Bars are jammed together, independent of one another, so that Passage’s narrative comes off like a provocative string of ideas and exclamation points more than anything else. “Apple of my mother’s eye, even if they convict,” he spits—bitterly and blithely and carelessly, all at once—before all logic gets gone and you just grab onto whatever scraps of language you can in the advert-jingle flood of splintered images: “Most oblivious, neurotic,” “smash my maths,” “juicy, delicious,” “appetites lashed to the hood of the Bentley,” “charm a snake, weave a basket,” some buckshot-blasted bullshit about Joan and Melissa Rivers. Overthink at your peril. Just hold tight to your swivel chairs, enjoy the ride, and regard the experience as the musical equivalent of the Internet/nightly news/ celebrity-factoid shuffle we're all pretty much caught up in.
Restiform Bodies’ David “Passage” Bryant on “Bobby Trendy Addendum”
Is the title character a strawman for American pop-culture avarice? I didn’t intend to paint him personally as an icon of greed, avarice or anything exactly—certainly not anything negative, if that’s what you mean by “strawman.” I wanted to beam a signal off peripheral, absurd characters on the D-list, hoping it might bounce off them and hit us in the retinas. I was saying I feel like Joan Rivers on the red carpet, digesting entertainment and shitting out celebrity caricatures. You’re supposed to want to be them, but you hate them or you don’t give a fuck, but you want to be something you’re not, or can’t have. Bobby Trendy and Joan and Melissa Rivers seemed like perfect personalities to channel that through. I think it plays as funny satire.
Can you envision a future in which expensive automobiles are no longer presented as chart-rap status symbols. Like due to sky-high gas prices, everyone's rhyming about tricked-out Vespas? Sure, absolutely. Jay-Z has the Euro taking over for the dollar, why not the Vespas? The Cool Kids give bike culture a nod with “Black Mags,” which is almost as huge as “Throw Some D’s,” at this point and cooler all around in my book. That’s where I have to hope it’s all going. Nas is calling out Fox News on Stephen Colbert. I think everybody can look forward to big change for our culture. I am not into causes and such—no pictures of Mao for this dude—but a Hummer in a video is the same as Pyrex measuring cups in your inlay. It’s insult-to-injury. Our record seems a lot like an indictment in some spots—which could be construed as insult-to-injury, too—but I hope it’s not received as rubbing the problem in. All the information on TV Loves You Back is stuff I’m trying to make peace with as a person, and that I think we all have to make peace with as a society. And you know artists have to be feeling a little ridiculous with all the car shit by now. Big old Caddy and shelling out all that dough to fill it? That's starting to hurt; no matter who you are, it’s just dumb. Bikes, Vespas, all that is smaller, more agile and creative, that’s the shit I want to see.
Do you watch much television? Yes, I watch a lot of TV. I try not to, but when I want to shut my mind off or get inspired by the media, TV is my go-to device. I watch Comedy Central a lot and E! I love The Office and 30 Rock, but don't get to see them much. My guiltiest pleasure might be Intervention, though. I was all about Shooting Sizemore, but I guess that got too fucked up to be on TV or something because it disappeared. Good TV exists, but bad TV is usually better. - RAYMOND CUMMINGS Friday, August 15th, 2008
Song of the Day 8/4: Restiform Bodies - Bobby Trendy Addendum
You could call "Bobby Trendy Addendum" 75% hip hop and 25% slick, nasty electro, and I'd give you a free pass for coming up with a quick-and-dirty song pitch. But I'd hate to leave it at such a stunted summation - truth is, Restiform Bodies deserve another couple hundred percentage points to encapsulate all the crazy shit that's going on here. It flips between slivers of sarcasm, pathos and keen insight, spinning like a roulette wheel, sometimes so fast that you can't tell the blacks and reds apart: "Give us just enough language to become instantly famous / and a pony every birthday, regardless of our behavior." Toss in disorienting elevator bings, woodblocks, near-chiptone glitches and two different decomposing bridges into and out of the chorus - you come out with a track that's as intricate as it is catchy.
"Prenez et écoutez, ceci est mon corps..."
16/07/2008 - posté par Newton
Sept ans après l'inauguration de leur discographie via un étrange premier album qui transcende les genres, le trio originaire de New Hampshire Restiform Bodies refait surface le 16 septembre prochain pour une seconde mouture intitulée "TV Loves You Back" à paraître chez Anticon. Une pochette formée de brics et de brocs, d'un enchevêtrement d'étranges dessins aux couleurs vives qui témoigne de la multiplicité d'expériences pour chaque membre de ce corps à nouveau uni et recomposé.
Depuis 2001, pour The Bomarr Monk, Passage et Telephone Jim Jesus, mener sa barque en solitaire a constitué l'unique chemin à emprunter avant de se retrouver en 2008. Pour le premier d'entre eux, architecte de la production, un chapelet d'albums à mettre à son actif parmi lesquels "Freedom From Frightened Air" et "Scraps" sortis l'année passée, un entrelacs d'instrus personnelles et de remixes d'artistes divers et variés. Entre temps, la voix particulière de Passage s'est quand à elle distinguée sur "The Forcefield Kids" en 2004 pour le compte du label à la fourmi. A leurs côtés, Telephone Jim Jesus est apparu comme le membre le plus en vue puisqu'il compte déjà deux albums à son actif, "A Point Too Far To Astronaut" en 2004 suivi du très plaisant "Anywhere Out Of The Everything" 3 ans après.
'Bobby Trend Addendum', premier extrait disponible, est en écoute sur la page Myspace du trio.
[...]
Restiform Bodies strike back after a seven year absence with the brightness turned up to 11.
Their classic self titled album and it's successor 'Sun Hop Flat' were sonic assaults that took influences from all over. As at ease with epic ambient oddness than with 80's electro wigged out rap work outs, their distinct attack on music saw the albums being picked up by Anticon's (now defunct) '6Months' Distribution and later led to all three members (Bomarr, Passage, Telephone Jim Jesus) releasing solo projects for the label.
This track is a first taste of their long anticipated first album for Anticon and it doesn't disappoint. The beat bursts out with a serious bounce that gets progressively more fucked up as the seconds pass. Passage's raps snarl and drawl over the track, he sounds confident with his disgust and the chorus recalls an amateur dramatics lament for consumer culture.
[...]
'T.V Loves You Back' is released 30th September and I can't wait to hear it.
"Bobby Trendy Addendum" review [Express Night Out]
7/17/08
BAND: Restiform Bodies
SONG/ALBUM: "Bobby Trendy Addendum" | "TV Loves You Back"
SOUNDS LIKE: A Tribe Called Quest doing a new wave version of an Atmosphere rap
D.C. BOUND: Bomarr, Telephone Jim Jesus and Passage have only recently reformed, but once the album drops on Sept. 30 look for the trio to hit the road.
WITH singer Mike Busse from Chronic future (The Future Lords) and musical act & producer Ryan Breen aka Back Ted N-Ted.
Their sound is very electronic oriented but still hip hop. 3 tracks are now playing on their space: "Special Education", "Tight Mag", "The Summer of 1980". Apparently this collab is nothing new, two of the tracks being from 2005. Is it still going on ?
Seven years, numerous solo projects, and a lot of music has happened since we last saw a release from Resitorm Bodies, whose self-titled debut album dropped in 2001. Now, Bomarr, Telephone Jim Jesus, and Passage have reunited as a collective and are unleashing TV Loves You Back, their first proper release since hiatus and their debut record for Oakland, CA-based imprint anticon. Equal parts hip-hop, pop, and new wave, the new album carries a distinctly dark feel to it, with heavy, ghettotech-style bass and lyrics spit over the mic at an aggressive pace. "Bobby Trendy Addendum" takes a bitter stab at impulse buying and nightly, fear-mongering news programs (which, according to this track, are somehow linked), and is a good introduction to this cult group's sound.
Seven years later, the beast stirs. In the gap that followed Restiform Bodies’ genre-crushing self-titled LP (and companion piece, SunHopFlat), much did happen, and several records of those times were made. Bomarr holed up in Oakland, mastering his hypno-bounce sound (Freedom From Frightened Air, 2007). Telephone Jim Jesus roamed Europe, collecting etherea previously unexcavated (Anywhere Out Of The Everything, 2007). Passage went solo (The Forcefield Kids, 2004), and then to hell and back. In 2008, the three-headed post-mod monster called Restiform Bodies is whole once again. And, at long last, the RBs drop their official Anticon debut like a sack of analog televisions onto the fractured landscape of modern urban forms.
TV Loves You Back is a dark and dense, art-twisted, New Wave-inflected hip-pop marvel born of our overstimulated era. Musically, it stands alone, which is to say it fits perfectly within the Anticon oeuvre. Strains of ghettotech, crunk, and hyphy twirp and twirl with Eno-like atmospherics and buoyant bass swells, while rapper/songbird Passage warps his vocals over blistering synth. Likewise, the lyrics gallop at a ferocious clip. Like electron shots from a cathode ray tube, they combine to form a deliciously sardonic image of modern living, and break down into constituents that are metaphysically hopeful, socially relevant, poetic, and playful.
Fittingly, opener “Black Friday” begins with 30 seconds of ominous Top 40 rap bluster (crowd cheers and wonky, reverbed “uhhs”), forcing the Restiform tongue through its cheek before launching into a track that traverses burbling synth bounce, doubletime drum ‘n’ bass, and free-floating atmosphere. Passage forges the vocals to match-laidback rap, unlikely falsettos, rapid-fire couplets, a chorus of bent melodies-while tempering his words into a poignant evocation of the mind of a mall shooter hitting his prime.
Our narrator too is in top form, next styling over the wamping, squirilly club beat of “Foul,” then navigating the chopped white noise and guitar of “A Pimp-like God.” And when “Panic Shopper” creeps in like a vintage horrorcore tune, painting a QVC-inspired nightmare in stream-of-consciousness strokes (”Look at you vibrating, bent-necked, bowed-head/PS3 building-jumping panic shopper/Launch off
the parking garage/In a Tony Robbins murder-suicide with infomercial knives…”), it’s clear that Restiform Bodies have made something as enjoyable as it is topically thick.
“Consumer Culture Wave” details a crux theme: the supplantation of sexual urge with purchasing power. And on “Bobby Trendy Addendum,” Passage adopts a Brooklyn sneer to bang out bitter satire atop a lo-bit mélange. He connects impulse buying to nightly news fear-mongering here, then traces our need to be placated by prizes to a childhood pastime in “Pick It Up, Drop It.” “Interactive Halloween Bear” is classic Restiform-surging synths, crystalline overtones, bassy blips, snapping drums-overrun by a rich imagery that seems to portend societal collapse onto the living-room couch.
But before all descends into chaos, TV Loves You Back hits back with the sixminute-long climax, “Opulent Soul.” Passage burns through a Gary Numan-esque laissez faire croon, cocksure rhymes, and a distorted Knife-like nastiness while the music intensifies like a thunderstorm of seething digitalia. He crescendos with a 32- bar rap rife with quips (”When Ty says ‘move that bus’/It just cleans my ducts”) and affecting observation (”Round and round goes the collection plate/And ain’t defeat a wicked virus, how it lives to repeat?”), and by song’s end, our hero reclaims his humanity from the bottom of circuit pile.
TV Loves You Back comes to a quiet close with “Ameriscan,” a bittersweet lullaby about cancer recognition technology. It’s an ending that only Restiform Bodies could pull off, but it’s also perfectly apropos for an album so focused on the comforts that bring chaos into our daily lives.
Restiform Bodies
Restiform Bodies - TV Loves You Back (Anticon)
Street Date: Sept. 30, 2008
01 Black Friday
02 Foul
03 A Pimp-like God
04 Panic Shopper
05 Consumer Culture Wave
06 Bobby Trendy Addendum
07 Pick it up, Drop it
08 Interactive Halloween Bear
09 Opulent Soul
10 Ameriscan
Don't hold me to this, but this new track from anticon oddities Restiform Bodies is about modern spoiled American rich-twit privilege. I think. Evocative, sometimes inventive phrases jump out-- "Fendi bag and an icy chalice," "Pony every birthday regardless of our behavior," "Appetites lashed to the hood of the Bentley"-- and even the parts that are hard to follow, pauseless strings of ideas that keep canceling out each preceding phrase at a rate of something like two per second, are more attention-grabbing than bewildering. But if they connect to each other in any distinctly narrative way, it's kind of hard to figure out exactly how. That could be part of the appeal, or at least whatever appeal there is that doesn't otherwise rely on the beat-- a constantly-mutating slab of yowling, pounding synthesized clamor that does a good enough job invoking the kind of ugliness you'd want from an abstract rap track about moneyed arrogance. That super-tongue-in-cheek 1980s Euro-pop chorus is crazier still.
It's not really new but a director named Lorenzo Fonda made a video a while ago featuring Restiform Bodies' "Sippy Cup" track. It's a trailer made for the 2006 Independent Film Festival of Boston.
Telephone Jim Jesus made a production for the artist-dj-performer-sound-picture-editor-filmmaker newageynofriends. The track is untitled John Brown Still Owes Me a Hoodie...
New Restiform Bodies' album untitled "TV LOVES YOU BACK"
4/28/08
FINALLY some news, the RB's have "officially" announced (Bomarr already did in last december on the Controller 7 forum) their new LP titled : "TV LOVES YOU BACK". The release date : September 2008. They also added 3 new tracks : "KKKmart Live SXSW 2004" , "On the Horns of the Beast" (Live in Paris Part 1 11/17/04), "Restiform Bodies vs WuTang" — and they redesigned their MySpace page.
More info from Bomarr:
none of those songs will be on the new record. 2 of them are live songs from our tour a few years back that never turned into studio songs. we just wanted to change it up a bit and get some new stuff up for people to listen to.
we'll have a new song from the record up in the coming months.
the restiform vs. wu tang thing is just something that we found online that someone * did.
• Mar 27 2008 8:30P @ Subterranean - Chicago, IL • Apr 2 2008 8:00P @ The Rickshaw Stop - San Francisco, CA • Apr 11 2008 10:00P @ N/A - Playa Del Rey, California • Apr 12 2008 9:30P @ The Cellar Door - Visalia, CA • Apr 19 2008 8:00P @ The Hemlock Tavern - San Francisco, CA • May 08 2008 8:00P @ Backspace - Portland, Oregon • May 9 2008 9:00P @ Tba - Seattle, Washington • May 10 2008 9:00P @ Neurolux - Boise, Idaho • May 11 2008 6:00P @ Uprok Records - Salt Lake City, Utah • May 11 2008 8:00P @ East Street (Private Event) - Salt Lake City, Utah
PASSAGE "Tennis, Piano and Other Primary Sightings" EP
3/03/08
Earlier version of "The Holy Phony Haunt" CDr. Unfinished EP according to the inscription on the CD; with some different tracks, lyrics and mixes. This CDr surfaced briefly and exclusively during the Restiform Bodies European tour in 2004.
For those who haven't seen the masterpiece yet, here it is :
"Surface Sincerity"
Apparently there's still a few copies of the Dvd-r at Vinyl Kingz.
» Soundtrack still available here. » Check out Bomarr's YouTube channel here.
New Telephone Jim Jesus' track + press
2/20/2008
STEREOGUM.COM « Telephone Jim Jesus "Things" » February 13, 2008
Oakland's George Chadwick, aka Telephone Jim Jesus, grew up in New London, New Hampshire. The folks at anticon call the place "snowy," and you could say the same for his lovely, Baudelaire-riffing sophomore solo album Anywhere Out Of The Everything. The record includes cameos from Pedestrian, Why?, Bomarr, Alias, Odd Nosdam and Doseone, among others, but is also peopled with the ghosts of a longterm relationship: Amidst the beats, guest voices, and lush forward momentum, the fuzzy transmissions rattle with a melancholic underpin. On non-album track "Things," Chadwick stitches together a Gothic-leaning instrumental, a gorgeous, spectral tune that opens in near silence and debuts with this Drop.
Can you give us a little background on "Things"? "Things" was made during an emotional period in early 2005, shortly after a break up from an eight-year relationship. I used sounds from a children's music education record where they played single notes on instruments to identify the sounds. I sampled several instruments and created my own little orchestration. I felt like it was a strong expression of the sadness and rollercoaster emotions that I was experiencing at the time. It was originally going to be on the album, but then seemed too long and slow to fit the pace. It was created about the same time as "Featherfall"* on the album and could be a sister song, from a period when I was making more orchestral music and focusing on melodies more than other things.
» Download Thingshere or listen here. » More Tel.Jim.Jesus press here.
