Totimoshi Premiere “The Whisper” Video; Playing Caterwaul Fest This Month
I had a pretty interesting conversation with Meg Castellanos and Antonio Aguilar of Totimoshi last week that’ll be posted around here in the next couple weeks as a video interview. The occasion is the first show for the trio — Chris Fugitt rounds out on drums — in about nine years that will take place later this month, specifically May 28 at Caterwaul Fest in Minneapolis. You might recognize the pair from the work they’ve done over the last half-decade in All Souls across three-to-date full-lengths the latest of which was last year’s Ghosts Among Us (review here). Totimoshi was founded before the turn of the century and self-released their first album in 1999 before going on to work with labels like Crucial Blast, This Dark Reign, Volcom Entertainment and At a Loss Recordings, the latter of which issued 2011’s Avenger (review here), their final full-length to-date.
Among the topics covered in the chat was how Totimoshi were never — they’re still not — a band that fits neatly in genre. Aguilar linked this to his own roots and those of Californian punk rock in Chicano culture and history, and went back through his family line to some surprising places as a part of that, reckoning with colonialism and racism from across the subject/object divide. Keep an eye out for the interview, which I’ll post as soon as I find a day for it before Caterwaul. In the meantime, Castellanos has put together a video for “The Whisper,” which comes from the band’s 2008 LP, Milagrosa, released by Volcom and produced by Helmet frontman Page Hamilton and engineered by Toshi Kasai, that you can see below. Totimoshi toured with Helmet at this point and was closely linked with the Melvins for a while, but “The Whisper” is a showcase of dynamic as well as Totimoshi‘s songcraft more generally, less aggro in its shove than some of their work was even as they grew increasingly melodic throughout their (original) tenure, but still keeping some snarl to coincide with the harder-landing edge of their tonality and Fugitt‘s steady crash.
There’s some nostalgia in the video, as I imagine there is in bringing back a band you used to play in after about a decade, and that’s reasonable enough. Maybe in looking back as well, Milagrosa was a special moment for the band, short of burning out, touring hard, righteously undervalued as they’d be for the duration but dug into their own style and consistently progression in their approach. It wasn’t their final statement — again, to-date; they have a couple new songs in the works but said in that interview they don’t want to do another full-length at this point — but “The Whisper” emphasizes the gentleness as well as the force of their output and reminds just how encompassing their material could be when met on its own level, genre-based expectations put to the side if only for a little while.
If you’re going to watch the video, give that a shot, especially if you aren’t already familiar with who Totimoshi were or what they did during their time together. Take a breath and let it be its own thing, because that’s what it is anyhow. In any case, I hope you enjoy:
Totimoshi, “The Whisper” video premiere
Official music video for The Whisper by Meg Castellanos.
From the album Milagrosa, produced by Page Hamilton, engineered and mixed by Toshi Kasai.
Totimoshi are:
Guitar and vocals, Antonio Aguilar
Bass, Meg Castellanos
Drums, Chris Fugitt
