Cyanide Tooth - Tentative Identity CS

From Ever/Never... CYANIDE TOOTH is back. We don’t know what transpired since he was last picked up on radar, but Tentative Identity is a whole new ballgame in an entirely different arena. After upgrading in the afterlife, Mr. Tooth (aka Creamo Coyl of Spin Age Blasters on WFMU) expands his parameters and takes aim at the fences.

As the album opens, we seem to be in familiar territory as a curious transmission comes beaming in from a distant land (New Jersey), but then a jackhammer beat drops in like a flaming hot meteor and all of a sudden—we ain’t in Kansas no more. Someone keeps trying to interrupt, but once the slice/dice session is concluded, we’re trapped in the library and all of the synth manuals are checked out. Is the window smashed, or has it been lifted slightly to let the air in? “Slow Dance The Abyss” is an honest-to-g-ddamn techno banger, boldly staking claim with an undeniable momentum. Why would you wanna deny this? Come, don’t party poop—and be sure to stick around for the space/bass breakdown. “Banishment Park” is library-like, but the beauty and terror of existence has been steroid-enhanced. “Are We Here Yet?” conveys an unease with the American landscape like an incisive Negativland cut. The cloudbusting “Hollow Deck” sneaks under the door like smoke and hits the blunted atmosphere of a Company Flow instrumental or a late nite Anti-Pop Consortium session. “Radium Spray” opens up the hammer party again, but this time you can dance to it.

Interspersed between these tracks are brief and tantalizing forays into real and theoretical textures courtesy of vintage drum machines, archaic sound sources and other sonic detritus. The album concludes with a broken-hearted AI singing a lonely song into the night, eventually mingling with signals from heaven above. It’s as poignant as it is peculiar. All kidding aside, the board of trustees at Ever/Never considers Tentative Identity a substantial step in CYANIDE TOOTH’s development and we urge you to pay attention.