MC TRACHIOTOMY

MC Trachiotomy: With Love from Tahiti

MC Trachiotomy is a direct product of the digital revolution. With the advent of personal recording studios made possible by affordable computer systems and powerful recording software, any John Doe on the street can seemingly become a musician by digitally manipulating instruments, vocals, and sampled sounds. Such is the case here on w/love from Tahiti, a 70-minute-plus pastiche of beats, rapping, and assorted ambient noise that is at times interesting and inventive but never gripping enough to fully absorb the listener.

Trachiotomy no doubt has a sea of styles and noises swimming amidst his head, and he uses this album to drain them all out, no matter how seemingly disparate the elements. The backbone of the vast majority of the album is the beats, often funky and groovy as on both the opening and closing tracks. The groove the beats establish throughout the album is subtle yet strong. On many of the tracks the beats are overlaid with Trachiotomys rapping, which is extremely distorted and unintelligible throughout. Distortion is a key theme of the album, as not just the vocals, but also many aspects of the background percussion and the computer noise, are run through different distortion filters.

Two influences appear on the record, and they both seem to be sources of inspiration but in extremely different ways DJ Shadow and Tom Waits. The entire structure of the album and its use of digital software to combine odd ambient sound with beats and instrumentation into one long-flowing artistic statement are obviously heavily influenced by Shadows Endtroducing.. Track 8 especially reflects a Shadow-like mellow yet intense groove. Much more surprising is the Tom Waits influence. Seven songs exhibit Waits-like vocals and odd percussive rhythms, while the Waits-inspired emphasis on creating new and interesting sounds permeates the entire album. Track 7 almost plays as a Waits parody it features a gruff, loud voice shouting nonsensical syllables over weird percussive chimes and noises, orchestral flourishes of woodwinds, and a child laughing maniacally in the background. There is a definite The Black Rider / Bone Machine feel to these songs.

But simply assembling these sounds and influences into such a collage is not the entire point MC Trachiotomy is obsessed with tempo, and he takes full advantage of his computer software to continually speed or slow the rhythms, to pause the music for a few beats, and to insert seemingly random sound bytes into the middle of the music. Whether it is a simple beat-driven rap number, lo-fi 70s soul music, or even swelling strings, Trachiotomy never lets the song progress at a normal pace uninterrupted for very long. These digital manipulations at first make the tracks interesting but then grow tiresome when continuously repeated over the course of the entire album.

This is a complex album with myriad styles, high ambitions, and much rich detail that grows sharper with repeated listens. However, despite the crush of interesting ideas that Trachiotomy explores, the groove never takes over to launch the album into the realm of baby-makin music that its liner notes claim it to be. At the end, you feel like the album should have taken you to a higher level that it never achieves. Still, it is an admirable effort and amply rewarding for fans of music with non-traditional song structures.
-Matt Sherman - LEFT OF THE DIAL

MC Trachiotomy is a Louisiana character, a collaborator of the dreadful Mr Quintron, whose albums Robot Alien or Ghost (Rhinestone, 1999) and W/Love from Tahiti (Bulb, 2002) are rare collages of madness highlighted by terrible production, drunk accent, sub-standard percussion and cryptic lyrics. The latter (73 minutes long) defines a territory straddling rap, spoken-word, psychedelic rambling, Captain Beefheart-ian wackiness, lo-fi pop and the Residents' new-wave operas (EKG, Along th' Coast, Bareboat Blessing). The album is the musical equivalent of a hurricane, sweeping away swamp blues (Form of Gardenias), free-form jamming (Southpacific Weenie Coast), reggae balladry (Now You Don't Know Where to Start), hip hop (Palpitations), etc. The comedian indulges in spoofs of spy-thriller cocktail muzak (Midway Dining), 1940s' big-band swing (Drop Thkias Off At The Pool), Broadway show tunes (Can You Feel It), and late-night soft-jazz (Valentine). The psycho ridicules music in the grotesque six-minute pantomime Long to Hold You. Stay Awake sounds like someone cooking an omelette while listening to classical music on the radio. Yes, some of it is "that" musical. The creative intensity of these albums is simply frightening. - History of Rock Music by Piero Scaruffi

MC Trachiotomy – W/ Love From Tahiti (Bulb)
Find a 15-year-old Walkman. Load it up with batteries you’re pretty sure will crap out within 30 minutes. Dunk it in a toilet tank for 45 seconds. Now, slide in a mixed tape of early ’90s New Jack Swing, seedy airport lounge Muzak, and Andre Williams and Hasil Adkins mumbling about coitus in their sleep. You'll have something approximating W/Love From Tahiti, the next illogical step from Ween's The Pod and the only album released in 2002 with which I've been obsessed.

Emerson Dameron - DUSTED MAGAZINE

BEST OF 2000: MOST BIZARRE
(MC Trachiotomy tops the list)

MC Trachiotomy: Robot Alien or Ghost
Super-distorted, way-hard-to-understand lyrics over unique hip-hop tracks. A sleeper. - URBAN AMBIANCE JOURNAL

Albums like this one are truly puzzling affairs, defying categorization and
happily confounding employees and customers alike. With homemade tape
collage techniques, lo-fi hip-hop beats, vocals that resemble only total
gibberish, oddball samples and sound effects galore, MC Trachiotomy creates
a wild recording that would make the likes of Stock, Hausen and Walkman,
Miss Pussycat, and The Melted Men proud. Whether it is dadaist hip-slop or
a simple prank, MC Trachiotomy knows how to mix the humor with the party
tracks, and run it through a slew of effects, creating a chaotic cut and
paste carnival of sounds. Completely bizarre. [PW] - OTHER MUSIC