Food for Animals

An urgent collision of post-punk sound rock and roll heavily influenced by both later-’70s likes from the Slits as well as the Pop Group and vintage early industrial works like Einsturzende Neubauten and Test Dept. with modern-day underground hip-hop and experimental electronica, Meals for Animals shaped in Baltimore, MD, in 2003. Manufacturer and beatmaker Ricky Rabbit (Nick Rivetti) got released a small number of single records having a breakbeat- and glitch-informed type of laptop-based sound rock and roll when, through a shared friend, he fulfilled Andrew Field Pickering, a Pa native who got performed drums for a number of regional hardcore punk groupings after shifting to nearby Metallic Spring. Rivetti performed Pickering an unfinished monitor that required a rapper, and Pickering quickly provided his rhymes. A year’s well worth of sporadic function (including acoustic guitar parts by engineer Daniel Helmer, an unofficial third person in the duo as Dr. Dan) converted into Meals for Pets’ debut EP, Scavengers, a 2004 launch around the Canadian indie label Top Course Recordings. A strident mixture of Pickering’s explicitly politics rapping (beneath the stage name Vulture Voltaire) and Rivetti’s milling sound and cut-up beats, Scavengers drawn good if somewhat puzzled evaluations from on-line tastemakers like Pitchfork, but an interval of personal interruptions — Pickering’s mom passed away, and Rivetti and Helmer taken care of their research at Wayne Madison University or college — defer the follow-up. When the group regathered, Sterling Warren (Hy) became a member of as a far more conventionally gifted rapper to check Pickering’s quirky, uncomfortable circulation. A full-length recording, Belly, premiered in early 2008.