Surface To Air Missive - “The Heat”
This is long overdue, but I feel some need to document it anyway, because I never talked about it here and I’d like to make one final (perhaps futile) push to get it out there.
Last year saw the release of the first album from Surface To Air Missive, the project of Tallahassee musician Taylor Ross. It was recorded entirely by Ross, who broke bones and screwed up his back very badly during the sessions and had to finish with his head turned at a 90-degree angle. It was released on Leaving Records, the Stones Throw subsidiary run by LA beatmaker Matthewdavid, making it the first “rock” release on Stones Throw. Surface To Air Missive became a full band, and played two shows in Tallahassee before going out on tour as an opener for of Montreal.
One of those shows was unannounced, but the other was one of the most packed local shows I have seen here in Tallahassee, and also possibly the best. I’m still a little dumbfounded about its occurrence - partly just because of how good it was, but mostly because it kind of came out of nowhere and then just disappeared soon after. This makes some sense if you’re aware of the context - Ross has been playing music for some time now, most notably before as Dream Love, and has a reputation for being somewhat hermetic with his projects, doing things and then breaking them up just before people really have a chance to catch on to them.
So this show happened, and I went and was blown away by Surface To Air Missive, which came completely out of nowhere for me. Their music has been branded by Leaving Records as “southern psychedelic rock,” which is somewhat accurate but doesn’t really paint the full picture. This isn’t Hendrix or Jefferson Airplane-type psychedelia - it’s much weirder, like if you took something from the Nuggets compilation and gave it prog-level guitar parts. There are twists and turns and frequent tempo changes taken with total joyful abandon; it’s playful in a way that reminds me a lot of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti and is incredibly impressive from a technical standpoint, but not at all flashy.
In other words, it’s miles away from anything else around here; when I heard that Surface To Air Missive was going on tour with of Montreal, I was almost sure that they were going to blow up, but the tour has now long since ended and Leaving Records hasn’t even sold out of their 300-copy pressing of the record. (I just ordered a copy the other day.) It doesn’t seem to have gotten around online either - only about 250 people have heard it on Last.fm, which is absurdly low - and I have to admit, I didn’t even listen to it for a few months after the show because I couldn’t find it anywhere without paying for it and I forgot that Spotify existed. Now, I’ve been hearing that the band may or may not be broken up, and that Ross has written an entire new Surface To Air Missive LP which may or may not end up getting released.
This music deserves to be heard, but it’s already becoming lost. For some unholy reason, we didn’t get it at my college radio station when the album came out, but I’ve gone out of my way to correct that since coming into a position where I was able to do so. It’s getting bumped pretty hard now, despite being way past the release date and there being little to no chance of this having an impact on anything. Still, I feel some obligation to give this music and information a home, both with the station and online. It’s an essential Tallahassee record, but even here many people don’t know it exists.
If you haven’t heard Surface To Air Missive, do yourself a favor and correct that. “The Heat” and “Surfacing” are available as free downloads from Leaving Records, and the album is also available for streaming on Spotify. Below is the video for “Surfacing b/w Missive.” Brilliance should not go so unrecognized.
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