photo credit Conor Maccormack
PARTISAN RECORDS DEBUT LP DUE IN 2024 + PLAYING SXSW NEXT MONTH
Body Meat, the alias of singer, songwriter, and producer Chris Taylor, shares his first single of 2024, “Focus.” Breaking new ground with the distinct sonic language he’s formed over his first several releases, “Focus” marks a significant evolution in Body Meat’s musical trajectory as the first offering of his forthcoming album coming later this year via Partisan Records. Next month, Body Meat will be debuting more of his new music in Austin at SXSW. More details to come
In line with his prior contortions of pop music’s limitations, “Focus” is a calculated explosion of his discography to date and reinvents his own statement of what the genre’s outer realm could sound like. The track conjures Taylor’s musical avatar moving through a futuristic city soundtracked by a surround-sound collection of fractured, skittering percussion. The song’s accompanying visual, directed by Rich Smith, reinterprets the sonic idea of breaking through limitations into the visual medium and the limitless possibilities that exist once that binding tether is broken.
On the video, Chris shares: “We see body tether himself to his home and leave to venture out to the overworld. He finds that the path is blocked by a mysterious dungeon, he must traverse the dungeon and find a way out to the other side. Only by breaking his tether does he find the exit to this place.”
Since creating the moniker in 2016, Chris Taylor’s releases as Body Meat have functioned like distinct musical sandboxes with different dimensions and house rules establish each one. Taking inspiration from early stints in Denver art-rock bands, Taylor’s music as Body Meat is rooted in piecing together the debris in the aftermath of unpredictable genre clashes and making sense of them. His singular blend of trap production and Ethiopian / funk music on his two previously released EPs Truck Music (2019) and Year of the Orc (2021) existed in a plane all of their own, with Pitchfork describing the latter as “chaotic, overwhelming stuff, which is part of the point.”
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