A BOI
“See Through” Music Video
Directed by Ben Snyder
Wolfshield Records
Add date – 3/21/19

About A BOI

Chances are, if you’re familiar with TaSzlin Muerte’s music, you know him from Austin’s uncompromising trio BLXPLTN. It follows, then, that you think of Tasz as a ferocious punk rocker – one driven by his sense of social justice to thrash against the system. He’s a bomb-chucker, a fire-spitter, a truth-teller, a scourge of the status quo, launching distortion and drumbeats against the powers that be – but no musician can rage without ceasing. Tasz has his meditative moods, too, and ABOI, his latest project, is more of a sweet and slow-acting poison than a sudden splash of acid. “See Through” is beautifully bleary, dreamily electronic, and thoroughly trippy.

Although it might take hardcore fans of BLXPLTN a moment to acclimate themselves to ABOI, it won’t take them long to realize that Tasz hasn’t changed very much. The confrontational artist behind “New York Fascist Week” and “Education Destruction” is still very much here: he’s just altered his strategies a bit. BLXPLTN has always been interested in horror iconography, and ABOI makes that attraction even more explicit. This is haunting music – mixes decorated with distant piano, synthesizer, drum loops, treated vocals, echoes everywhere – and as beautiful as it is, it’s more than a little scary, too.

About The Video

On “See Through,” Tasz sings like a man experiencing some severely altered states. He’ll pull you into the web of sound, and though you might be a little freaked out by what you see and hear, you’ll be glad he did.

Dedicated fans of TaSzlin Muerte – those who know the catalog backward and forward – might recognize that he’s done something like this before. A year ago, he released a spectral single with a group called Dark Palaces: an aural nightmare called “Wasp’s Nest.” The clip for the Dark Palaces single was directed by Ben Snyder, a filmmaker whose twisted vision and fascination with horror tropes parallels Tasz’s own obsessions. Snyder’s two clips for ABOI continue the loose story he began with “Wasp’s Nest” – a tale that includes some serious deep-woods spookiness, strange technology, a whiff of vampirism and witchcraft, and ghosts in the shadows. The “See Through” video begins with Tasz’s violent death (he’s impaled on a katana) and only gets weirder from there. Elliott Frazier of Ringo Deathstar produced and engineered the tracks, as well as playing guitar and piano spots; he, along with Conrad Keely of … Trail of Dead are featured in the “See Through” clip. This is a video that plays like a private ritual – glimpses of unspeakable nighttime rites set to music that splits the difference between corrosive punk and trance-like electro-pop.

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