heavier than excitement
[2003, vanishing]

tan as fuck were a nashville, tennessee based three-piece. they were amazing. taf's line-up consisted of angela messina on guitar & flute (the flute was more of an occasional thing), derek schartung on keyboards, samplers and sax (used with the same infrequency as the flute) and josh elrod taking care of the percussion. all three would supply vocals, of some manner, at one point in time or another. as far as member's projects outside of taf go, i'm mostly familiar with angela messina's work. there's vegan brand, which is her eclectic solo project as well as (the foolproof way to stave off commercial appeal, by naming yourself) the new faggot cunts, which freedom from founder matt st. germaine was a touring member. tafer derek was also in that group. while the new faggot cunts is a rad band name, tan as fuck ranks up there as an all-time favorite. anyways, it was the relocation of josh elrod in 2003 to new york that sent tan as fuck on permanent hiatus, but derek and angela both still play together under the taiwan deth [pictured] moniker. the duo's musical exploits with that project are less noisy and center more around drone atmospherics. am's also been in what i can only imagine to be numerous other bands, so i'll toss out a few more names just for kicks: the dutchies, cornfed and sweet, small children (another duo with schartung). she also sews!
taf's, brief recorded output spanned a few different styles, noisier rock outbursts, drone as well as touches of psychedelia. the dronier leanings, most expertly shown off on the fantastic (sars)chasm cd that carlo put out, would hint at the direction that angela and derek would carry over into taiwan deth, but in terms of the more experimental aspect of taf, that disc was their pinnacle. heavier than excitement stands as their shining experimental/noise rock album. rock isn't necessarily the right word to use there. the drums sound rock enough, but little else resembles the genre, but let's not get into semantics. when compared to the rest of their discography, the skully cd-r would be the most like-minded release. branching out a bit further you could say that vampire belt shares a bit of common ground with the tan as fuck on this cd.

heavier catches the band at their, well, catchiest. the sax and flute interplay combined with josh's driving drum pounds on night of the living creeps is awesome. on a good deal of taf's music the drums aren't used nearly enough, and you'll only come to this realization when you hear how great his contributions are. sometimes they're used more as an additional layer of sound, occasionally, they steal the show. even when his drumming is in more of a complimentary fashion, it's appreciated, like on die live die, which is a great group effort, everyone here's doing something that i like. i especially loved the one a half minute keyboard assault in the middle stretch. athwart hawse is as close to drone as they get on the disc, but they pile a lot of additional sounds and noises over the top of it. there's more excellent keyboard use on athwart, as well. meh, just take my word for it, every song on heavier than excitement is a keeper. i found that there was, at the very least, one thing to latch onto on every track. while applying it with the label of "best" in regards to the group's oeuvre depends on your perspective, i can say that this has the most replayability. the absence of longer songs, six out of eleven tracks range from six to eight minutes in length, the rest are under five, certainly helps.

Were-Echo

hey, thanks so much for posting such a lovely overview of our output, which i just stumbled upon...
'heavier' was the best of the material that we first recorded, in the early part of '02, and was one of the last things we put out, and mostly ended up in a limited edition of cassettes.
psyched about the drum accolades, maybe i should have played more! i wanted to get more 'out' with drumming, and pretty much abandoned it by the end. i starting out sitting behind an almost normal kit, in our first jam/rehearsals and by the end of the month i was laying on the floor, singing through a drum machine.
it seems almost naive now, but we were really trying to get away from typical song structures the longer we were together and the stocking headgear was a way to depersonalize us, at least physically as well as release some inner impulses through donning a mask... TAF was a kind of spiritual experience for me and the culmination of some desires to play free music and just freak out a bit. i miss those two...
just for the record, it was derek who used a 'sampler', which was a tweaked/bent casio sk-1, which was pretty much used to sample himself, to various surprising ends...

hey Josh, thanks for all of that info. definitely good to get some first-hand perspective. i loved the different facets of taf, the sprawling droned noise as well as the tighter rocking ones. it was interesting (and cool) to hear some more conventional drumming on a taf album.

also, i'm going to go update the review for the bit about the sampler, thanks for that, too.

is there any chance you can reup this? cant find any of their stuff. i would really appreciate it.