/ info
‘Stick A Flake In Me (I’m Done)’ is the latest “magnificently erratic” (GoldFlakePaint) track to be revealed from Joyous Material Failure, the debut album by Carbs, the not-folk pro-bro rap duo of Fence Records alumni Jonnie (Jonnie Common/Inspector Tapehead) and post-op-pop dropout James (Conquering Animal Sound/The Japanese War Effort/MC Almond Milk).
It will be released on September 11, 2015 via the Save As Collective, as a Bandcamp download and as a limited-edition CD in handmade pizza box packaging.
Recorded in calorific bursts across a year, Joyous Material Failure is a clutch of instinctive collaborations created using a broad and bizarre pallet of sounds. Slouchy beats and sung choruses intersperse with loose-tongued rapping, but this isn’t a hip-hop record. Nor is it a pop record either. It’s the document of an all-family collaboration, powered by pizza and a shared will to defamiliarise the process of making music.
The album takes its name and inspiration from a phrase used during a lecture by designer Simon Harlow. The notion that the breaking and wearing of man-made creation can, upon nature’s intervention, become beautiful in a distracted way directly informs the songwriting process. Each track takes as its starting point the sound of a faulty machine or an improper signal chain. Half of the melodies on the album were created by deconstructing and reassigning original parts in a way that would bring unpredictability to the instruments.
Lyrically, Joyous Material Failure carb-loads on nostalgic pop culture references, humorous not-quite rhymes and odes to junk foods. The warped bubbles of opener ‘Stick A Flake In Me (I’m Done)’ – a lament for the decline of ice cream from the Persian Empire to Mr Whippy – twinkle with accidental feedback from a metronome running through a rudimentary vocoder. ‘Salty’ pairs a lyric about emotional and physical insecurity and the secretion of certain bodily fluids (tears) over a Tom Hanks film with delightfully gloopy bleeps and beats built on a backbone of thrown objects and cassette deck motor strain. ‘Pizza Time O’Clock’ pays tribute to the carbo-rehydration process that Jonnie and Jamie undertook when writing (a full list of pizzas consumed are collected on the group’s Twitter account). ‘Life Drawing’ touches on involuntary erections, pre-millennial late night Channel 4 and hilarious heavily pregnant pauses.
By creating a foundation of odd and broken sounds, then embellishing those with sabotaged processes, Carbs have created something that’s fundamentally strange but also endearing, accessible and laugh-out-loud funny.
/ press
“Buoyant and infectious… Think Beastie Boys if they were signed to Anticon” The List
“Joyous Material Failure is rooted in pop culture and cemented with sticky, slouchy electronica” The Skinny
“With their clever, dry-witted lyrics and eccentric, gelatinous beats, CARBS have proven that they’re more than just empty calories” Scope Mag
“A playful romp of words and ways that might well be the perfect soundtrack to this most depleted of summer seasons” Gold Flake Paint
“Dry, observational humour atop intelligent electronica. More please.” Scottish Fiction
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/ tracklist
01 Stick A Flake In Me (I’m Done)
02 James Special
03 Infinite Ammo
04 Fat Back To The Future
05 Waterworld
06 Pizza Time O’Clock
07 Life Drawing
08 Salty