BODY MEAT

Get to Know Body Meat, A Philly Weirdo Who’s Rewriting the Rules of Rhythm

(Pitchfork Review)

The genre-defying musician discusses his DIY approach to electronic production, his love of Ethiopian percussion, and his (sort of) relation to Stevie Wonder in this Rising

Christopher Taylor can’t stop tapping his finger. The 27-year-old musician seems self-conscious as he waits for his food at a Venezuelan restaurant in Bushwick, Brooklyn, all the while ragging on his casual outfit of ripped cargo pants and a baggy black sweatshirt. But standing at 6-foot-2, Taylor pulls the look off with the laidback swagger of a skateboarder (which he is) or an Urban Outfitters model (which he once tried out to be). Upon closer inspection, maybe he’s not tapping on the counter out of nervousness (though this is his first-ever interview). He actually looks transfixed as he lightly drums along to the merengue music blasting overhead, locking into the song’s frenetic tempo.

The principles of rhythm are integral to Taylor’s work as Body Meat. In April, he released his latest and best full-length, , a collection of raucous tracks combining Nigerian vocal samples, video-game plinks, deep grunts, high-pitched chirps, and all manner of drums, spliced together into unpredictable patterns and time signatures that may sound off-kilter to Western listeners. “People call them weird rhythms,” he tells me with an incredulous look on his face. “But in other cultures these rhythms are normal. If you listen to Middle Eastern music, they think of rhythm in a completely different way. It’s not weird. They just got more groove.”

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