Black Moth electro-pop

On "Start a People," Black Moth Super Rainbow makes the most of vintage analog equipment and the occasional vocoder vocal to create a hazy, psychedelic daydream of electro-pop genius that could pass for the soundtrack to some long-forgotten children's program of the '70s that PBS was forced to cancel because the tunes were bumming everybody out.

With vocoderized vocals wrapped around such melancholy verse as "When we die we go away" and "I don't wanna live through winter/ I can't stand to see everything ending," these guys make the suicidal humanoid on that Grandaddy record sound happy, while the beats at times are just funky enough to remind me of a really cool old album ("Push the Button") by Money Mark that I'm sad to say I've never heard another person mention.

Anyhow, although the band is based in Pittsburgh, reviewers all over the world are eating it up like it was Quisp or something. Which it kind of is. At Opus, one reviewer sized it up as, "It's like Boards of Canada and Neutral Milk Hotel sitting down with Wayne Coyne to record a children's album inspired by the sounds of late '70s video games and public television fare ... with an episode or two of 'Doctor Who' thrown in for good measure."

At SCTAS, the critic went with, "If your dreams were available for rent on Beta, there is no doubt that BMSR would be the backing soundtrack." And Tone Vendor ended a rave with "'Start a People' just rocketed to the top of our Best Of list for 2004 ... and the disc hasn't even finished playing yet."

The band's CD release show is 9 p.m. Saturday at The Eye, 4814 Penn Ave., with Omolara, the Mariana Prosperity, a fashion show and laptop music from Vorpal.

Vale's History

Catch Vale and Year with Drums and Tuba at the Quiet Storm tonight before they shove off on a two-week tour that finds the local avant-folkies doing shows with Grand Buffet, Early Day Miners and more. Or catch them when they're back in Pittsburgh opening for Wilco June 6 at the Three Rivers Arts Festival. The show tonight begins at 9. Admission is $8.

The tour is in support of "Vale and Year Create a Perfect History," an album hailed here at the Post-Gazette as "a richly textured collision of styles from indie-folk to something far more avant-garde with squealing No Wave sax and wild experimental passages." Future plans for Vale and Year include the release of a double album, "Holy Music and Art," in October, with a third album, "Civil," to follow as early as February. They also plan on releasing a DVD of "Vale and Year Dunks," which made its local premiere at the CMU film festival last weekend.

Lit Riffs

A cover of The Velvet Underground's "I Found a Reason" by The Cool Grand's Eric James will be used on MTV's "Lit Riffs," a book and CD combination in which noted authors write short stories based on pop songs. James is celebrating Mother's Day Sunday at 1 p.m. with a Borders performance at Northway Mall in Ross.