It is just half a year ago, Todd Tobias first solo record here fell to the mat. The musician I at that time is mainly known as a producer of quite a few plates of lo-fi pioneers Guided By Voices and solo albums by Guided By Voices frontman Robert Pollard, made after a long period of habituation impressed with the totally elusive Impossible Cities.
Todd Tobias isn’t new to SRM, I have very fond memories of listening to his Calvino-inspired album, Impossible Cities. Therefore, I entered listening to this album with some rather high expectations, which I am glad to report were not dashed in the slightest. The long, winding songs are all sublimely amorphous soundscapes. It is astounding how much weight is packed into every one of them despite their relatively sparse composition. It causes a transformative affect to occur in the diligent listener, altering mundane happenings into something absolutely poetic. For my second listen I sat on my balcony on a cloudy morning, watching birds peck around for food. With the help of Tobias’s music, it was pretty damn epic.
Once the conceptual track permeates a Todd Tobias album, which after producing and starred opposite Robert Pollard, has now dropped steadily in the instrumental composer robes.
If ” Impossible Cities ” (2014) retraced “Invisible Cities” by Calvino, “Tristes Tropiques” echoes the melancholy tropical namesake of Claude Levi Strauss essay
Todd Tobias is a musician and engineer associated with various Guided By Voices/Bob Pollard projects, but lately he’s been carving out a solo career doing more ethereal instrumental material and soundtracks. Tristes Tropiques is a strange, mystical sound painting filled with eerie vocal loops (particularly on the opening and closing tracks), reversed and decaying guitars, and sometimes beats. Definitely has a soundtrack-like feel, especially the way the tracks segue, suggesting changing scenes. The album’s title translate to “sad tropics”, and it definitely conjures up feelings of being blue in paradise, for whatever reason. Sometimes it gets really dark and foggy, other times it’s brighter, with chiming guitars, but it’s still kind of melancholy. All of this is nice and serene.