True Deceiver

What I've always loved most about working with Syffal is the mindset. We regularly shit all over stuff other people tout as the second coming of Kanye West brand prepaid artisinal chili, and then we gush all over some unknown kid making music as a way to escape everybody else. That's not to say that we don't give credit where credit is due.

Some artisinal chili, DOE!

When we're at our best, it's riding shottie with like-minded artsts and labels, scratching at the surface to get at the essence of what makes it all go boom.

One of those like-minded individuals is Tom Filepp, of Cars and Trains and Circle Into Square fame. Filepp is at the forefront of this generation's tinkerers playful and experimenting, refining its craft. I picture Tom at a grand organ rocking out like Phantom of the FUCKING Opera but all wrapped up like spaghetti in 1/8 inch cable, stereo wire, and RCA cords.

Circle into Square, as a sister-label to Ceschi Ramos and Co.'s Fake Four, Inc., has been a safehouse of sorts for creatively-inspired projects like Cars and Trains and Big Pauper and Otem Rellik and Powerdove and on and on. Cars and Trains is Tom Filepp. Cars and Trains was Tom Filepp? Right now, True Deceiver is Tom Filepp.

And I don't think you're fooling anybody, Tom!

Tom, where has this project been? Why have you been hiding it from us? True Deceiver sounds like what Tom Filepp was born to make. It's that perfectly timed left turn executed at the height of rush hour traffic.

True Deceiver is heavy. It has mass. Weight. Serious feels. It's like everything poured out all at once.

True Deceiver is the perfect marriage of synth tinkering and post rock leanings. It's like walking through the swamp in a pair of moon shoes. It fucking grinds! It drives... it's staring out the window while the world whizzes past and Neil Cassidy leans on the latenight steering wheel. Its rhythms keeps hammering like a Johnny Cash frieght train. The whole thing is like listening to the soundtrack of the launch sequence of everything I love being shot into outer space.

Da fuck, TOM!?

I love when artists take leaps and we get to soar with them for those rare few moments when they don't know where they're going to land. It's like the littlest prince catching shooting stars with his butterfly net. I feel privileged, excited, and extremely happy for True Deceiver to have been born.

Joel Says: Having known Tom for a long time in internet years, and having only appreciated him from afar so as not to sour our friendship, I've never stepped in front of Brando to cover one of his releases. It isn't that I've never loved something he's created, it's that I respect Brando more when he's bouncing up and down as he's typing out his latest missive to what makes him giggle musicly. If you've never had a friend like Brando, I encourage you to get new friends. Reading what someone as honest as Brando writes about the music he loves is like that one kid from The Wizard showing you what's in his lunch box.

This True Deceiver shit is exactly what Brando says it is, but to me it's almost this fucking eerily romantic love song in an era of big brother. Sure, we can't jack off without some computer logging what we're flogging ourselves to, but the first few times I put on the True Deceiver EP I had a specific visual:

True Deceiver is the guy. The computer guy. The guy who makes a living tap tap tapping away at the keyboard. His screens are set to vertical. He communicates in code. He's not much for social interaction and suffers from mild panic attacks even when ordering Chinese food. He's not one for emotion, or even connection, but through his work he finds beauty in the strangest of places. Out of all the stationary cameras and live video feeds, one in particular caught his eye. Then his heart.

True Deceiver is, to me, the lonely guy seeing beauty through the eye of a Tiny Black Drone, and while he could easily move on to his next task behind the desk, he keeps the feed of this one particular drone open in a corner of his multiple screen display. Out of all the mundane and mind numbing tick tick ticking our protaganist trods through, he keeps his eye on that feed like a schoolboy keeps his peepers peeking in on the actions of his crush.

Through his constant attention his adoration somehow morphs into love, and the video feed somehow over time seems to almost reciprocate his attention by focusing on sunsets and the reflection of the moon in the crashing tide.

Why I got all hung up on this idea while listening to True Deceiver, I don't know.

All I know is when I first started typing the above I was jolted out of my haze at the 3:30 mark of Between Our Teeth and I smiled like a fucking creep.

BUY THIS.