BandCamping: Bang Bangz & Fat Tony Put Up New Songs

There’s a crap-ton of new stuff exploding out of our sweaty, steamy city right now; so much that I can barely keep up with it, honestly… It seems like every time I turn around, there’s a new band/project/etc. meandering its way through the speakers/headphones, and a lot of it, frankly, is pretty damn good.

One that got sent my way recently is the latest song by {Bang Bangz}, which is the new-ish project of Mario Rodriguez, probably better-known as the frontman of cool local rockers {Tax the Wolf}. With his new trio (which includes singer/keyboardist Elzabeth Salazar & drummer Vik Montemayor), though, Mario’s leaning away from the harder-edged, more “rock” stuff in favor of subtle, low-key electro-pop that’s hazy and murky like a darkened city street on a late summer night.

“Since Last Night,” at least, is electronic but still warm and organic and comfortable, even though it sounds cautionary and half-threatening, exhorting the listener to live for today over gentle beds of keys, limber guitar melodies, and Rodriguez and Salazar’s alluring night-sounding vocals. Check it:

The band’s playing this coming Saturday, October 22nd, as part of the Free Press Houston Oktoberfest Jubilee thing at Fitzgerald’s…

Then there’s ultra-prolific rapper {Fat Tony}, whom I love partly because he completely and totally destroys any kind of preconceived ideas of what he “should” sound like; the guy’s smart and literate and sarcastic and funny and nerdy and hard, all at the same time.

Beyond that, he’s totally unafraid of doing crazy-ass stuff like, say, perform “Nigga U Ain’t Fat” with awesome avant-garde string quartet {Two Star Symphony} as his backing band at the recent Canned Acoustica 3 show. (And holy hell yes, it works.)

He just put a new track, “Good While It Lasted” up on his BandCamp, and it’s fun and quirky and thoughtfully bitter, a backhanded slap at an unfaithful lover that’ll be released next month as a 7″ by pop/punk label Phat ‘n’ Phunky. Take a listen here:

BTW, Tony’s up in NYC right now, doing a couple of shows at CMJ, which is very cool — he’s doing the BPM2011 show and one put on by Roxy Cottontail + Shameless, both on Friday. He’ll be back in town next Wednesday, October 26th, though, in time for the Das Racist show, again up at Fitz…