Babel Fishh - Fathers First Musket (2008)

For today I've got something I believe hasn't been seen around the internet much, if ever. Fathers First Musket is Babel Fishh (Babelfishh)'s EP from 2008, released on picture disc by Ooh! That's Heavy in an edition of only 220 copies (of which I own 2, more on that later). This album is an interesting work in the Texan horrorcore / folk hop artist's catalogue given that it seems to mark his transition from acoustic based punk folk rap (a sound reminiscent of Dose One x Astronautalis) to the more doom metal sludge rap style found on his tape releases beginning with 2011's Eyeless Terror.

The production found here (with contributions from Papervehicle's own Edison and Univac) is distorted, discordant and unsettling. His topics usually cover the life of the working class, with a healthy dose of Texas history along with a world weary cynicism. His voice as I mentioned above is not dissimilar to Dose one, but I find the worlds that Babel Fishh builds to be more interesting to listen to, they're more immersive and have much less tendency to veer off into irritating singing. This is one for the fans of the weird stuff, but it might well be an enjoyable listen for punk and metal fans as well.

Note: The following is mostly a story about making this rip. Skip to the download link if you don't care, I won't take it personal!

Now, creating this particular rip was something of a challenge. I'm fairly new at ripping vinyl, and what I understand from this experience is that the grooves on these picture discs are fairly shallow, which means if the counterweight is not correctly set they WILL skip. This also means that to get a steady play you wind up with very heavy drum sounds, the potential for distortion, and a disc that won't last very long with repeated listens (anyone who knows if this information is wrong please comment, I'm a self taught vinyl person and would welcome any corrections in my understanding. The above is my personal conjecture).

My first copy had been rendered virtually unlistenable by the previous owner, so after years I found a second one that was "mint". To get a rip without skipping took several hours (this is a 10 min album), and while I really like Babel Fishh, listening to pieces of his songs over and over again was not something I'd have wished on anyone I had any affection for at all.

But it was worth it, to get a clean sounding rendition (as clean as it was meant to sound, it's still Fishh) and to be able to share it with all of you. Cheers!

Download


I just noticed we reached 5,000 views today! Trylemma and I want to thank all of you for your interest, this project has been a lot of fun and knowing people are seeing it makes it even better. See you next week!