Black Moth Super Rainbow

Black Moth Super Rainbow is an American experimental band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Their music contains elements of psychedelia, folk, electronica, and pop. Their distinctive sound is characterized by analog electronic instruments including the vocoder, Rhodes piano, and Novatron.

A Graveface insert included inside the album Dandelion Gum describes them as such: «Deep in the woods of western Pennsylvania vocoders hum amongst the flowers and synths bubble under the leaf-strewn ground while flutes whistle in the wind and beats bounce to the soft drizzle of a warm acid rain. As the sun peeks out from between the clouds, the organic aural concoction of Black Moth Super Rainbow starts to glisten above the trees.»

Black Moth Super Rainbow existed under a different name from 2000 to 2002; satanstompingcaterpillars, with the only members being Tobacco and Power Pill Fist. Under this name, the band self-released their music on different labels, including Fuckeroo (Flower Slides) and Side 8. After their third album in 2002 (The Most Wonderfulest Thing), the band added three members (Father Hummingbird, The Seven Fields of Aphelion, and Iffernaut) and changed their name to form Black Moth Super Rainbow in 2003. BMSR began releasing their music on the 70’s Gymnastics Recording company, which is the band’s own imprint (characterized by a tree-person jumping rope in a dress). Many of the tracks from the satanstompingcaterpillars era have appeared, often reworked, in bonus reissued albums, though most of their work from that era would never resurface. Little is known about the band or its members, as they have kept themselves something of an enigma.

On March 17, 2007, the band played alongside The Octopus Project as one band at the South by Southwest music festival, playing music from their collaborative project, The House of Apples and Eyeballs.

Black Moth Super Rainbow also opened for the band The Flaming Lips on their Fall 2007 tour. More recently, BMSR performed at the 2008 SXSW music festival in a badges and wristbands only, packed-to-capacity show at The Thirsty Nickel.

The bass guitarist of BMSR has also released solo albums (Extra Life, Thoust Pain is Thine Angre, Kongmanviong) using an old Atari synth and recording them live to tape. Tobacco has also released some albums (Fucked Up Friends, Super Gum [Destroying Dandelion Gum] {Rumored to be a remix album}). After 2005, Graveface picked them up with Lost, Picking Flowers in the Woods and bonus re-issued versions of their first two albums. Dandelion Gum was BMSR’s third album, released in 2007, and possibly their most successful album with many good reviews. With it came their first music video for the track «Sun Lips». In early 2008, they continued to release Zodiac Girls - Single and Drippers - EP in November. Along with Drippers - EP, BMSR released for MP3 download on their MySpace Bonus Drippers (The Older Unlreased & Hard-To-Find Songs), older and unreleased tracks or bonus tracks like «The Dark Forest Joggers», a Dandelion Gum vinyl exclusive, «Side 9», a Lost, Picking Flowers in the Woods vinyl bonus track. or «Melting in the Meadow», a Start a People outtake track. Word from their MySpace blog says of a fourth album to being released, but there hasn’t been a date told as of yet.

The band is slated to perform at the WIDR Barking Tuna Festival in October, 2008.

On November 4, BMSR released Drippers - EP which not only includes new tracks like «Happy Melted City» or «Milk Skates» but also features some lost tracks from the Dandelion Gum era («We Are the Pagans» and «One Day I Had an Extra Toe») it also features Mike Watt and BMSR’s first official remix of Laura Burhenn’s song «Just for the Night». Three days earlier, BMSR played their last live show for a while, due to the recording of their fourth full-length album Eating Us, which should be released on May 26, 2009.