Over the course of 8 long-players of original music spanning a couple decades or so, Washington, DC-based songwriter Kowtow Popof has been labeled as both “unbearable sap” (Washington City Paper, 1997) and “underground icon” (babysue/lmnop, 2013). Kowtow prefers “underground sap.” His career has been mostly an experiment in multi-track recording, influenced by the music he’s become a fan of along the way. If Cat Stevens jammed with Wire, and Elvis Costello twiddled mixing-board knobs while Gary Numan looked askance at the whole thing, then you might be thinking that’s what a Kowtow record sounds like.

Of course none of that would seem particularly disparate from Kowtow’s perspective. Each record has been an effort to mix up all of those influences to produce the album in his head. In the early days, you got the electronic folk that culminated in 1992’s Songs from the Pointless Forest, a clash of seventies singer/songwriter with eighties punk/new wave. 1996’s Coaster channeled Americana and tales of broken romance (this is where the unbearable sap label comes in) while taking some cues from more surreal sources (Kowtow’s signature tune “I Am Thinking of My Darling” took its title from Vincent McHugh’s 1943 “happy zombie” novel). End of Greatness (2006) and Exalted Headband (2009) were vocal and instrumental sides of the same coin, treating the end of love and the ends of the universe as part of the same cosmic fabric.

Kowtow’s latest record, Tastes Like Armageddon, out now on Wampus Multimedia, might be his most accomplished yet, a modern-sounding record that manages to be equally accessible and mysterious. From “Ataraxis (I Brake for Squirrels),” a call for kindness in the face of extremism, to “Alectryon at the Door,” a spooky meditation that sounds like a sleeper hit, to “Lookin’ 4 Rock,” a boiling rave-up that resurrects Popof’s rant style, Armageddon delivers steely resolve, a snapshot of an artist transcending doubts.

Kowtow interrupts his album-making with occasional live performances with Rob Santos accompanying on electric guitar, and has appeared at DC venues such as the Birchmere, Galaxy Hut, and Iota. He also collaborated with the electronic rock band Hitchcock Blonde on their 2006 debut Soul Button, and has covered songs for tributes to Jonathan Richman, Lou Reed and Bill Nelson. His dream is to one day sing a duet with Stephen on the Colbert Report with Los Straitjackets as the backing band.

Official website: www.kowtowpopof.com
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