[REVIEWS] TV LOVES YOU BACK

Restiform Bodies
TV Loves You Back
(Anticon)
by Matthew Fiander

Restiform Bodies don’t like American consumer culture. That fact becomes apparent pretty early on their new record, the sarcastically titled TV Loves You Back. The off-kilter hip-hop group takes ten tracks to tell us what we already know. TV is bad. A consumer culture is, well, against the consumer. We’re all being made to buy things we don’t need and value things—shown to us on television, apparently—that are inherently valueless. All so some nameless, faceless, power-wielding being can make some money.

If that all sounds vague, it’s because the complaints Restiform Bodies proffers on their new album are just that. Too bad, really, because musically they are anything but vague. The music on TV Loves You Back is energetically scatterbrained. Opener “Black Friday” shifts from one disparate beat to another, speeding up and slowing down tempo what seems like a dozen times in just three minutes. Throughout the record, the group deftly meshes harsh and unadorned hip-hop beats with warmer elements of electronica. “Pick It Up, Drop It” samples clips of violin, mixes them with a fuzzed-out sythesized bass, and lays them over a simple old school beat. “Ameriscan” builds itself over an electronic drone, slowly and more insistently than any other track on the record.
cover art
Amazon

But musically none of the songs sit still very long. They hook you in long enough to make you comfortable and then flip the track into something totally different. It’s a compelling sleight of hand. Too bad they can’t switch topics and moods as quickly with their lyrics. Songs like “Black Friday” and “Consumer Culture Wave” seem to both condemn the culture around us, and condemn us as individuals for participating. It might start as juxtaposition, but it quickly becomes muddled contradiction. Are we the QVC-hooked hollow heads from a track like “Panic Shopper”? Or are we the doves they sing about, tragically turned to pigeons when surrounded by overbuilt and ugly cities. Could we be both? Sure. But Restiform Bodies don’t explore that duplicity, and instead reserve as much scorn for the individual as they do for the culture.

And when they’re not condemning consumers that, they seem to imply, are too dumb to know better than to buy stuff, the group take faulty aim at sexual politics. “Pimp-like God” tackles the well-run-dry topic that is marrying for money. And “Foul” starts with the line “My dick get dizzy like a busy bayonet” which, joke or not, sarcastic or straightforward, is one of the worst lines you’ll hear in a hip-hop song all year.

Despite its musical strengths, TV Loves You Back never comes to much more than a lot of aimless whining. Restiform Bodies also conveniently exclude themselves from a culture that, judging from the level of attention they seem to pay it and the frustration they feel, they are very much a part of. The album consistently shoots for aloof sarcasm and irony, attempting to send up TV culture as something silly that shouldn’t have the power it does. The problem is, anyone with a pulse already knows this. And TV Loves You Back does little, if anything, to shed new light on the subject, making Restiform Bodies come off not as clever and thoughtful—which is clearly their aim—but instead as pretentious.

Rating: 4/10

Soundbyte- Restiform Bodies: TV Loves You Back

Restiform Bodies
TV Loves You Back
Anticon

If there’s a such thing as prog-rap, Restiform Bodies could be hip-hop’s Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Assembling break-neck beats that are constantly nudging each other in and out of audibility like a schizophrenic disc jockey, Bodies’ TV Loves You Back follows in the path of beat trailblazers like El-P: every track is like a mini-album, metamorphosing between musical ideas, sometimes without warning or reason. Even as the walls that separate rap from the rest of the musical world slowly decay, Bodies are truly progressive: they sometimes veer out of rap completely and into the bedrooms of Sonic Youth fuzz-rock and Daft Punk electronica. “Pick It Up, Drop It” trades Martian synth lines with Psycho-style screaming violins, while the sex-frenzy lyrics of “Consumer Culture Wave” float above an erotic, percussive flurry of beeps and pops. Each song on TV Loves You Back is a carefully-concocted trip, and listening to the album in its entirety is delightful substance abuse.

-Andy Pareti

EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD - Restiform Bodies - A Pimp-like God (Anon Day Remix)
Posted 9/29/2008 3:35 PM by Faith-Ann Young
Yeah that's right; we're talking about hos and gold again. Um sorry, sure, this is whiteman's rap (these guys are with Anticon Records, the experimental hip hop label out of the Bay Area)- but at least it's good whiteman's electronica rap. Meaning you'll dig the glitched out back-beat and smirk at the lyrics about how "hos are just witches with ring-fingers hungry for gold." You may even try to rap along. I wouldn't recommend it but I aint' gonna stop you. Oh- and in case you're curious, Restiform Bodies consists of vocalist David Bryant, beatmater Matt Valerio and synth man George Chadwick- and there's probably more coming from where this came from. So sink your teeth or grillz into this.

Restiform Bodies are dropping their newest full length entitled TV Loves You Back on September 30th. RB is an indie-hip hop act in the vein of labelmates WHY? who they happen to be currently touring with. Combining a sharp indie wit with heavy production they have created a new brand of hip-hop that is probably more accessible to hipsters than fans of The Game. Posted below is the track ‘Bobby Trendy Addendum’ off the new record.

Oct 2 2008
Restiform Bodies
TV Loves You Back
By Vish Khanna

With their glitch-y, ambient noise-infused beats backing equally distorted vocal flows, Oakland’s Restiform Bodies present the perfectly imperfect soundtrack to an information overloaded yet, ironically, attention deficit addled culture. On certain tracks, Passage, Telephone Jim Jesus and Bomarr conjure Sage Francis fronting Animal Collective, and their sharp rhymes and exhilarating soundscapes mix punk rage with playful sonic experimentation. Take “Foul,” which captures the manic energy of digital toys running amok while Passage drops illness between dizzying, ever-changing choruses anchored by emo melodies. A bit of Tortoise infiltrates the irreverence of “A Pimp-Like God” and the group’s obsession with blind capitalism on TV Loves You Back climaxes with the dark double-dose of the comically tinged “Panic Shopper” and the creepy voyeurism of “Consumer Culture Wave,” which examines the commodification of sex. Restiform Bodies generate a peculiar heat, mimicking the flickering glow from televisions that strikes culture vulture eyeballs and bitingly calling Western society on our complacency. (Anticon)

Restiform Bodies
TV Loves You Back
By Mark Keresman
October 1, 2008

With subgenre appellations multiplying like bacteria, it's hard to keep up. (I had to clue a pal who never goes to dance clubs that "techno" was indeed not "techno-pop," i.e. those '80 UK new-wave synthesizer bands.)

Oakland lads Restiform Bodies are hip-hop but nowhere near gangsta style. Aside from the urban strut and grooves of Public Enemy and Run-DMC, their influences include the darker side of early-'80s synth-pop (Gary Numan, the original/pre-Top 40 Human League) and glitter-era Marc Bolan (could be coincidence, but Bodies' Dave Bryant's singing voice sounds much like T-Rex singer Bolan's). Restiform Bodies often juggle genres within a single song — their rat-a-tat raps seamlessly segue into ominous, sleek, melodious passages with coolly mournful vocals, spiced up with very brief bursts of noise. Their subject matter (as hinted by this disc's title) includes the buy-more-you-soulless-drones ethos and how it infects all aspects of people's lives ("Consumer Culture Wave"), technology paranoia ("Pick It Up, Drop It"), and just plain paranoia (A hundred sharpshooters in his ribcage/shooting sharp pain in as many directions; I don't wanna know/but you're gonna tell me anyway, "Ameriscan").

Like Public Enemy at their best, Restiform Bodies engage you with the beats and audacious flair then make you look long and hard into funhouse-warped, revealing mirrors. (Anticon)

Restiform Bodies
TV Loves You Back

Engineered and mixed by Eli Crews at New, Improved Recording in Oakland, CA | Recorded by Restiform Bodies and Nathan Fritz at home and at Ex’pression College for Digital Arts in Emeryville, CA | Mastered by Mike Wells at Mike Wells Mastering | Produced by Restiform Bodies

The first minute-and-a-half of Restiform Bodies’ most recent LP, TV Loves You Back, sounds on par with the last decade of hip-hop albums; slow bass thumps, background crowd cheers and ominous keyboard strokes bring to mind a brooding lyricist entering a boxing ring, raring for a verbal sparring match. A steady groove and vocals eerily similar to rap pioneer Q-Tip suggest an oft-traveled path ahead.

Cue to 1:27 on “Black Friday” and all familiarity comes to a screeching halt with a whiplash of rewinding, vinyl-scratching fury. Synth and effect wrangler Telephone Jim Jesus amps up the tempo tenfold, throwing the audience into a whirlpool of fanfare horn blowing and multi-textured beats.

It’s no mistake, either. In an age when the iPhone and Facebook can Twitter-sync each and every movement of the techno-savvy, the Oakland-based trio takes note with a refreshing sense of self-awareness and a keen eye for detail. The electro-stomping “A Pimp-like God” drops cellular bleeps and bloops in between air-raid siren synths, a fusion of contemporary technologic trend and funky dance floor fervor that bucks harder than a 12 gauge.

The group’s cultural commentary is smart, offering much more than the tired agenda of rap’s usual ego-bolstering rhymes – though the obligatory self-aggrandizing lyrics are still present, clever metaphors and allusions make the three MCs “more absorbent than the leading brand” – taking aim at easily targeted culture icons (Joan and Melissa Rivers), high-fashion designer handbags (Fendi and Prada) and spin-off semi-celebs in songs like “Bobby Trendy Addendum.”

It’s a welcome kick in the face to the 21st century’s consumer generation – a joke the listener is in on from the start. As much as today’s youths love their HDTV simulcast, musicians like Restiform Bodies are needed to remind us that the feeling isn’t mutual. (Anticon Records)

-Mike Isaac

Preview: Restiform Bodies @ Bottom of the Hill
San Francisco By Dan Strachota October 7, 2008 | 11:06 AM Categories: Alternative/Punk, Electronic/Dance, Live, New Releases, Rap/Hip-Hop, Reviews, Upcoming

I imagine if Hot Chip came from Oakland instead of London, they'd sound like Restiform Bodies. The latter group shares the same weird juxtaposition of the pop cultural (lyrics about everything from silent film star Lillian Gish to Kill Bill), the mix of rapped verses and crooned choruses, the twisty-turny tunes made from synths and drum machines. But Restiform Bodies is grittier, weirder, hyphier.

Also, the Oakland trio mentions dicks a lot more.

Not sure if that's an Oakland thing exactly, but my male member does "get dizzy like a busy bayonette" on occasion, as Passage sings on the threesome's new disc, TV Loves You Back. Restiform Bodies is an Anticon act -- Passage and Telephone Jim Jesus have had solo discs for the local label, while Bomarr has DJed their events -- which means that it sounds like rap made by white kids who've listened to a lot of weirdo rock. That's not a value judgment; it's just a descriptor. I guess the same could be said for some Wu-Tang Clan, although I doubt GZA has ever played a show with French prog-punks Metal Urbain. Basically, what I'm saying is Restiform Bodies makes the kind of brainy, tough-talking raptronica that's more likely to steal your Philip K. Dick first editions and Silver Apples LPs than your old James Brown records.

Restiform Bodies :: TV Loves You Back
Anticon
RATE: 3.5/5

Reviewed on Tuesday, October 14, 2008 by Amorn Bholsangngam

Restiform Bodies certainly sounds like the Anticon group that it is. The familiar flow of twisted words that serve as social commentary and progressive yet minimalist MPC-created beats are prevalent on all tracks on their sophomore LP, TV Loves You Back. The sonic resemblance they bear to their Anticon peers comes as no surprise, considering two of its members (vocalist/MC Passage and instrumentalist/programmer Telephone Jim Jesus) have released solo records for the Bay Area indie hip hop label. However, the trio, which is rounded out by programmer Bomarr, has managed to carve out its own identity within the roster of likeminded art-hop musicians that they've found themselves a part of. Restiform Bodies may be one of the most consistently listenable artists on the label, due in large part to their willingness to craft hooks and counterbalance with their grittiness with a well-defined melody, a welcome departure from the dissonance and discordant sounds that many Anticon artists prefer. Passage demonstrates his versatility as a vocalist throughout the record, rhyming as confidently and compellingly as he croons. The musical backdrop created by Telephone Jim Jesus and Bomarr is expectedly dark and ominous yet surprisingly playful; their electro-flavored beats and post-punk-inspired synth lines sound like the soundtrack to a post-apocalyptic dance party. TV Loves You Back is the closest to pop that Anticon may ever come, a refreshing change of pace for listeners weary of the heavy, serious musical soliloquies that the label specializes in.

September 30, 2008
Why?, Restiform Bodies
(Vera ) Anticon made its name as a home for music that wasn't so much hiphop—underground, backpack, abstract, or otherwise—as it was music that resembled hiphop but reassembled its traits into something else entirely. Headliners and anticoners Why? long ago transcended ersatz rap, transforming into a sublime band that still exhibit some of hiphop's best verbal tics in Yoni Wolf's dexterous verses but combine them with gloomy live acoustics and songcraft that's as structurally traditional as it is sonically adventurous. Openers Restiform Bodies, though, remain more dedicated to the label's typically atypical old-school style—oblique, often breakneck raps delivered over scavenged synths, samples, and basement-crafted beats. Too frequently, though, their songs are stuffed with syllables but short on significance. ERIC GRANDY

Restiform Bodies - TV Loves You Back

If Depeche Mode and hip hop got drunk and hooked up, the resulting bastard love-child would probably. sound something like TV Loves You Back. Passage, Bomarr and Telephone Jim Jesus revive their Restiform Bodies moniker after an eight year hiatus, to bring us another genre bender. Aesthetically, this album effortlessly threads the line between 80’s synthepop and post millennial underground hip-hop. So it’s only fitting that this should be released on Anticon, the Oakland CA based indie label that has been pushing the boundaries of what can rightfully be called hip-hop since the late 90’s. As the title cryptically alludes, this is somewhat of a concept album. A manifesto if you will, that rejects consumer culture categorically. And if this sounds a bit cliché; take solace dear reader, in that the lyrical content really isn’t the focal point here. Sure Passage raps with dexterity and sings catchy enough hooks, but it’s the production that is the star here. The execution is of which is near flawless In my estimation. Ridiculously reverb-drenched snares crash, analog bass grooves and vintage synthesizers provide an authentic electro feel. If you like your hip-hop easily categorized and digestible this record is not for you. But if you’re looking for something a bit left field or are already a fan of Anticon, you will not be disappointed. Oh and it was mastered by my friend Mike (mikewellsmastering.com)

Restiform Bodies:
TV Loves You Back
[Anticon; 2008]
Rating: 7.1

California is a big state. And hip-hop aficionados, with their firm sense of place, tie Oakland to a unique style of rap that bears little resemblance to its famous counterpart in Los Angeles. The brightest lights of the Bay Area, E-40 and Too $hort, never fully bought into the dark, trigger-happy sensationalism of the Death Row artists: Guns simply weren't part of their vision of, or path to, the good life. Emphasizing the joy of letting loose, the hyphy movement that sprang up a few years ago only cemented the scene's drama-free outlook.
But Oakland's Restiform Bodies are agitators. And what better place for this hall of modest fame-- the indie-rap supergroup of Passage, Bomaar Monk, and Telephone Jim Jesus-- than Anticon? Their debut on the label, TV Loves You Back, presents a furious, righteous, and not entirely subtle dissatisfaction with capitalism. Thanks to the recent tumult in the world's markets, the album, like the DNC platform, has an added punch of timeliness. To be fair, mindless consumerism is more the target here than, say, overly leveraged banks. In short, the rappers mount their attack on low culture, not high finance.
"Consumer Culture Wave" suggests a fight-the-Man mission with its title. Luckily, the song is better than that, too gloriously strange and oblique to be pressed into the service of jam-band leftism. (Love and gender seem to be the real subject, anyway.) Better to revel in the fluorescent textures and spastic rhythms, an accurate evocation of life in the attention-deficient multimedia slipstream, than to grope for political provocations in the lyrics. After all, it would have sufficed to attack QVC in only one song, you'd think. Docking too many points here isn't fair, anyway: Laid out on the page, even the best songs forfeit their essence. But when you spit nonsense with the apocalyptic ferocity of El-P, in many ways the hyperpolitical white rapper's template, that nonsense may as well be scripture.
Ever eager to disquiet, the Bodies even stoke the listener's anxieties about machines (on the sludgy, horror-string-laced "Pick It Up, Drop It") and modern medicine ("Ameriscan"). If there's a paranoid style in American hip-hop, this may be its purest expression. Nodding to the post-Thanksgiving virus that turns the lanes of Wal-Mart into the Ben-Hur chariot race, "Black Friday" bounces between drum'n'bass speed and trip-hop languor to manic-depressively link consumerism and domestic life. That the Bodies lean on everything from the New Romantics to crunk to post-rock to ghettotech to paint this cultural self-portrait only amplifies the strangeness-- and accuracy-- of TV Loves You Back.
"Movies are for entertainment," Louis B. Mayer famously stated. "If you want to send a message, send a telegram." The role of art isn't quite that narrow, of course, but the legendary producer knew that audiences didn't want to be lectured. And sadly that's what a lot of independent rap does. The Restiform Bodies avoid this. As Passage put it: "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." That sums up why the record is not only digestible, but outright luscious. We're not watching a presentation or reading a complaint. We're not being condemned for watching "The Hills". We're living, for a YouTube minute, inside three minds warped and wracked by our national addiction to the screen. It's equal parts unsightly and arresting in the way that most pathologies are.

- Roque Strew, December 10, 2008