purchase limited cassette here:
bondingtapes.bandcamp.com
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Announcing the new ep from Philly rapper Torito and Baltimore beatmaker Jumbled - Music for the Rapture. A project that came out of a year of isolation from the pandemic, and from the sense of impending doom that grew so familiar during that time. Although they have only met once, when Torito’s tour stop took him to a Baltimore Chinese restaurant for a show that kicked off with a Jumbled beat set, the pair pieced this project together with the shared mindset (and restricted pace) of working parents with young children.
While only 4 tracks in under 10 minutes, Music for the Rapture is brimming with Torito’s layered lyricism and wry commentary, which match the mood that Jumbled’s instrumentals establish even in their brevity. In the title track, which kicks off the project, accelerating church organ serves as the backdrop for Torito’s opening salvo about a world pulled towards a bewildering and undeserved demise, before the beat switches to a funky guitar and bass groove as resistance mounts against the forces pulling us towards that demise.
youtu.be/hBuJzY3AxPs
In the Future Everyone Will Be Wearing One begins with a Princess Bride clip about wearing a mask - which Jumbled added to the beat as a nod towards the bull mask that Torito dons when he performs - only to have masks become part of our daily lives for the last 16 months. Over a bouncy bassline and soaring strings, Torito raps about people preparing for a future that may never come to pass and about being unprepared for the one that does, about the misguided priorities of those who cling to the old order as their world collapses around them.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjl6YCQfsbc)
On Pearls in the Slop, which contains the ep’s lone guest feature, Alaska (Hangar18, Cargo Cults) skewers the “buffoonery” of the American “shitshow” and tosses out his signature brand of wide-ranging cultural references over Jumbled’s ominous psychedelic guitar riffs. The hook envisions the Great Flood from the perspective of those who’ve made it onto the boat through no virtue of their own, and those who’ve been unjustly left behind, while Torito’s verse, half-grim and half-smirking, examines the various types of predation dragging us towards deluge.
The ep concludes with Affirmative, as Torito seeks a more positive posture towards an unnervingly uncertain existence. Torito’s usual punchlines, double entendres, and DOOM references still abound, but there’s also a newfound focus on trying to make his own path forward regardless of what’s happening around him.
The ep was mixed and mastered by C Money Burns, whose extensive engineering credits include Brzowski, Bluu Edwards, MC Homeless, Jesse Dangerously and Karma Kids.
Cover art for this project was borrowed from Jack Chick, a controversial religious writer and illustrator obsessed with the idea of a hellacious apocalypse awaiting a world of unbelievers. His religious pamphlets - ‘Chick tracts’ - are filled with stark, disturbing ‘fire and brimstone’ images designed to scare people into a clean, moral life and prostration before Chick’s idea of God.
Torito and Jumbled have collaborated once before on a track called Bubble Play - inspired by the ice cream treat for Jumbled 2019 summer album August Heat
jumbled.bandcamp.com/track/bubble-play
This project is coming out on cassette on July 2, on Bonding Tapes, from San Diego.
bondingtapes.bandcamp.com - with the instrumentals on the b-side.
links:
Torito
Bandcamp
toritorhymes.bandcamp.com
Twitter @ToritoRhymes
IG @toritorhymes
Jumbled
Bandcamp
jumbled.bandcamp.com
Twitter @NapalmdDef
IG @john_bachman_
