As a child, Tom Filepp inherited an odd pairing of passions from his father (a computer programmer gone rock bassist): he was exposed to both the technical & artistic angles of life well before knowing how to put them to good use. Whether it had been that, or the many nights spent in band practice spaces watching grown men cover New Wave anthems that made him the multi-instrumental fanatic he is today, is up for debate. But one thing is certain: Tom has established himself as a legitimate song-writing force in Cars and Trains.
Filepp picked up guitar and drums at age seven. Although he spent more time jumping on his bed pretending to play while blasting Michael Jackson than actually practicing, it was the beginning of something. Meanwhile, his interest flourished in
something much more difficult and less entertaining to pantomime. He began programming simple video games on the family PC and putting together computers from spare parts before they had any cool cachet (post-War Games, pre-Hackers).
As time went on Filepp picked up several other instruments. His second grade music teacher recognized the talent hidden in his paste-smeared fingers, picking him for an all-star concert for his ability to fumble through Twinkle Twinkle Little Star almost in key. Catapulted by such resounding success, he picked up trumpet the following year.
His relationship with the guitar was reinvigorated a few years later when he saw one of his crazed longhaired classmates rock out a version of Malagueña. Filepp decided it was time to lean the instrument properly, soon forming the first of several ill-fated rock bands. He moved onto hardcore and metal for a while, shredding and screaming his way through high school. Filepp's music tastes widened with time, and he became keenly interested in folk in the vein of Guthrie, Seeger and Dylan. Around the same time Filepp became enamored with hip-hop and many types of electronic music.
Inspired by projects like Boards of Canada and cloudDEAD, Filepp discovered a new direction for his music. He started working at what would soon become cars & trains, an attempt to marry his love of folk earnestness and electronic immediacy. After much trial and error and experimentation, cars & trains was born.
Filepp is constantly learning new instruments to add to the mix, both for new sonic possibilities and the sheer fun and humbling nature of learning a new instrument.
As cars & trains Filepp has done remixes for and collaborated with boy in static, Demune, Ancient Mith, Variex, King Rhythm, and Arsenic. Some cars & trains songs have appeared as soundtracks to several animated shorts.
little song
cars & trains paints a dense and personal landscape with "Little Song", a short digital EP due out this fall. Simple guitar based compositions pare back from the more densely orchestrated approach of the Rusty String LP, while layers of decaying feedback, sparse glockenspiel and tape samples weave a dark and dense tapestry of sound. Deep brooding vocals sit atop songs with deceptive timing, subtle electronic stutters, and thunderous and organic drumming.
Filepp visits common themes in his songs, building small worlds of melancholic reoccurring dreams, that divert to a more psychedelic and dark feel than previous cars & trains albums.
Portland locals guest on some tracks, lending saxophone (Hiram of the Harvey Girls), vocals (Chelsea McAlister, local folkster) and autoharp, circuit bent omnichord, and other subtle niceties (Drew McIntyre aka PZ/Big Pauper of Two Ton Sloth). The EP wraps up on a more intense note, with a synth heavy remix of "...And all of us, as well" off of 2007's Rusty String LP, by Boy In Static of Mush Records/Alien Transistor.
rusty string
With the Rusty String LP, Portland, Oregon based multi-instrumentalist cars & trains (twenty-six year old Tom Filepp) takes a cross-country step closer to the melodic electro-folk he set out to make with the 2006 debut EP, 2 AM. Woodwinds interweave with banjos, trumpets, strings and glockenspiel, fleshing out dynamically engaging song structures. Rusty String sits somewhere between stations on the analog dial, where an old country broadcast breaches into absent-meinded waves of static, synching up as if on purpose.
The album consists of handfuls of microscopic crafted worlds, shaped with tiny precision whiel recording in backwoods Appalachia and soberly urban Boston. The latent energies of those places were captured and realized, mixing solitary rural twange with driving electronic elements. Spiraling off these contrasts, Filepp explores a lot of ground lyrically and through found sound. Songs paint imagery of overgrown grass reaching through cracked sidewalks, hazy suburban childhoods playing not-so-benign games, self hypnosis, and bullet ridden statues standing alone in town squares. Banjo driven four to the floor stompers yield to spacious instrumentals laden with sampled americana. Bursts of orchestral cacophony and found sound then break through to reposition the listener.
Several guest spots add to the character of the album, including Alex Chen of Boy In Static (Mush Records) on viola, and a vocal collaboration with Sole (anticon. records). buy from circle into square
consumer confidence vol. 2 (free)
Consumer Confidence Vol. 2 returns with a wide array of sounds: layered programmed and sequenced drums, walls of synths, samples, and strings, at times both a departure and yet familiar from Rusty String. This volume presents a much more cohesively crafted set of songs, departing from the random compilation of the previous release.
Vol. 2 is announced by the chimerical cacophony of "First Act", thickly layered with sawtoothed synthesizers in a dark, upbeat frenzy. The mood shifts into the more concentrated and intense drumming of "Every Little Movement", punctuated by layers of samba drumming and static. The veil of intensity lifts to reveal the softer, more introspective melody of "Stand Still Like The Hummingbird", driven by softly plucked guitar, shakers, and a dot matrix printer, to be lifted up high in a sea of drums and clicks.
"Stand Still" is a short pivot point to the cozy world of "Everything in so Long", layered with nostalgia inducing detuned guitars, tamborines, and underwater synthesizers, leading up to a manic ending swathed with cymbal crashes and abused snare drums. The intensity of the drumming segues into the dramatic on edge sea of violas in "My Life as an Echo", which then decay into the epic epilogue of the record: the nine minute strong "Lift Your Hands, but not too high". Hewn with an orchestral approach, "Lift Your Hands" creates a beautiful, forlorn-yet-hopeful dream landscape, building up into a decisive intensity that brings the track to a close.
The last two tracks on Vol. 2 include lush remixes Boy In Static of Mush Records, off of his Violet LP, and Telephone Jim Jesus & Bomarr of Anticon, off of their Chapel of The Chimes live improvisation album. album download here (free!)
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