The Pennsylvanian experimentalist TOBACCO has helmed countless Black Moth Super Rainbow releases, remixed outsiders as offbeat as HEALTH and unexpected as White Zombie, and produced MCs ranging from Aesop Rock to Beck. But it's on his fourth solo album that TOBACCO winds up coining an apt name for his vast empire of moldering electro-fied dirt: Sweatbox Dynasty. The new LP-his second for Ghostly International-finds the rural recluse resurrecting an old approach to hack a new path through the muck. This may be his most unintentionally psychedelic and left-field creation yet, full of rhythms that start and stop like a tractor on its last piston, resonating melodies made to fuel transcendental meltdowns, and vocals that hiss, gurgle, and growl. In a flurry of days and nights TOBACCO made Sweatbox Dynasty, and while each of his previous LPs felt like a honing of what came before, this one plays like a lush island of oddities unto itself. Except in one regard-in starting over, TOBACCO found himself using a technique from in his nascent days of recording. He laid down every single effect and track on cassette, individually, before transferring it to a sampler and damaging the part as needed en route. The result is wild, and heard all over these songs. On an album with no guests, the tape deck is TOBACCO's one true collaborator-the Second Zombie Beatle there to eff up all his prettier inclinations
