Deerhunter - White Ink

January 19, 2009 by Brendan McGuirk
Filed under Video of the Day archive

More acts announced for All Tomorrow’s Parties May 2009

January 5, 2009 by Brendan McGuirk
Filed under Anablog

Reasons to Smile

November 24, 2008 by Aidan Hanratty
Filed under Anablog

What a week! 808s and Heartbreak is finally out! Unfortunately, I can’t say that I’ve yet had a listen, as I’m being a good boy and I’m waiting for my copy to arrive in the post. I haven’t done that since Hell Hath No Fury!

Fat-Free since 1982!

It’s no secret that I’m a bit of a fan of Kanye’s one-time tour DJ, former DMC champion A-Trak. He’s a great DJ, producer, and he’s pretty funny when he gets to typing stuff up and putting it on the internet. So, after contributing at length to blogs on Myspace, The Fader and Colette, he’s only gone and established his very own sole-purpose blog. Go have a look for some hilarious reads.

As well as the afore-mentioned 808s, I think everyone should check out this Fear and Loathing in Hunts Vegas mixtape. Diplo and Benzi have thrown together a bunch of half-speed tracks from the Alabama-based Paper Route Recordz collective - some originals, some remixes, but all completely bonkers. I’m talking reworkings of Born Slippy, Careless Whisper and A Change Is Gonna Come, to name but three. Bizarre. Essential. You can grab it for free or for under $5 at 192kbps, and anything over $5 gets you 320kbps and a few bonus tracks. It’s all worth it.

And on the freebie side of things, check out Simian Mobile Disco’s twisted Re-Edit of Deerhunter’s Octet over on Pitchfork. It’s better than a kick in the face.

Tags: 808s and Heartbreak, A-Trak, Benzi, Deerhunter, Diplo, Kanye West, Paper Route Recordz, Simian Mobile Disco

When Bradford gets angry…you know the rest

August 19, 2008 by Dar McCaus
Filed under Anablog

1 Comment

It’s hard not to feel a pang of sympathy for Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox at the moment. In this interview with Analogue magazine, Bradford had the following to say about leaking records:

I resent someone else deciding when to leak your music for you. Like I’m not going to put our new album microcastle on the blog for free. Its an album we worked pretty hard on so its going to be more traditional

A week later and Deerhunter’s forthcoming album, ‘Microcastle’, was all over the blogs like eczema. This was a shockingly early leak, considering the album was not due out until October. In response, Deerhunter put together an EP called ‘Weird Era Contd.’ as a special surprise to be released with the album. According to GorrillavsBear, now this too was leaked, or more specifically swiped by some cheeky little scut who found out that Bradford’s mediafire folder was not protected. Not only that, but a demo of the forthcoming Atlas Sound album (Bradford’s solo project) was yoinked too and some pictures of Bradford as a child.

Mr Cox, understandably was not happy about all of this. The following screengrabs, of posts on the Deerhunter blog (since taken down) demonstrate just how unhappy he was.

To be honest, I’d feel a bit violated too.

Tags: Atlas Sound, bradford, bradford cox, Deerhunter, ire

Future Days Festival: Vicar Street Saturday June 14th

June 17, 2008 by Dar McCaus
Filed under Reviews

12 Comments

Dan the Man: Pic by Loreana Rushe

As part of last weekend’s Future Days festival, Vicar Street turned into a hip musical playground by hosting a line-up of acts that was so ‘indie’ I’m surprised people weren’t being turned away at the door for not wearing cardigans or hair-slides. Here is a short digest of what went down in the big venue on Saturday night.

High Places
It’s 8.45pm and Vicar Street is worryingly empty. The lights are up before High Places (as they will be between all the acts tonight), and the increased illumination accentuates the cavernous emptiness of the place. We’re in tumbleweed territory before boy/girl Brooklyn duo High Places emerge. However, as soon as they start, the lights drop sharply and people start reverse-melting out of the shadows like vampires. Soon enough, there is a moderate and respectable crowd up front. I know nothing of High Places so I don’t feel all that equipped to comment in detail on their live show. All I can say is it sounds extremely influenced by Animal Collective, and on my first impression, in a derivative and flimsy way. There are sampled tribal-type beats, some live drumming, wigged out sound effects and the girl sings in an insipid, disengaged manner. Post Animal Collective bands are multiplying like bunnies at the moment. But while superficially adapting that band’s current sound might be achievable for groups like High Places, getting near the blistering creative genius behind it is the real challenge. Someone told me their EP is well wort a listen though. So I could be wrong.

White Williams
White Williams are another band I could write what I know about on a postage stamp. According to Wikipedia, this is how their record label describes their new album: “unapologetic pop that flirts with the vacuous nostalgia of the American dream; engaging ambiguous and schizophrenic instruments with impressionistic lyrics, driven by a casually heterosexual backbeat.” Ahem, a casually heterosexual backbeat? The vacuous nostalgia of the American dream? Who writes this shit? As punishment for that sentence I refuse to say anything more about their show apart from this…the lead singer does a freakishly studied Avey Tare (singer from Animal Collective) impression; same hat, same shirt, same dance, same strangled vocal yelps. Tonight Matthew I am going to be someone incredibly more talented than me.

Deerhunter
Just as I’m starting to worry that the world is insidiously being taken over by Animal Collective underlings, Deerhunter emerge to a respectably full venue. They look tired. Bassist Josh Fauver has huge bags under his eyes and singer Bradford is cranky, moaning more than once about the house lights. This could be a real disaster for a band renowned for their erratic live performances. If Deerhunter are in shitty form, they tend to play a shitty gig. It’s as simple as that. They are transparent that way. Somehow, things work out well enough. They don’t exactly bring the house down, but the clutch of new songs from Microcastle sound more alive, more muscular, and dare I say it, more Cryptograms-esque than they did at the last show in Whelans. It’s as if they recorded an album of poppy material because they were bored of drone rock, then took it on the road, realised they were bored of pop and started droning out again. The crowd are familiar with much of the new album (it was leaked a shocking five months ahead of its release date). What I hear tonight is, at the odd intense moment, like the new album being covered by Suicide, Spaceman 3 and Mogwai all at once. A short set is polished off with a ferocious reading of ‘Heatherwood’, which was sadly missed last time around. Man, they look tired though.

Dan Deacon
He does his usual thing, does our Dan, ‘cept on a much bigger scale. For those not familiar with a Dan Deacon show, it’s basically a completely interactive experience. It veers from ridiculously sweaty communal freak-outs in front of a strobey green skull as a crouching Dan messes with pedals and samplers, to his playful hi-jinks that involve, well, everyone. Tonight, these include a massive game of tag that turns the entire crowd into a vortex of sweaty bodies racing around Mr Deacon. He merrily conducts this madness in a pair of luminous pink shorts and a Jar Jar Binks t-shirt. It’s hard to describe these shows without making them sound lame and gimmicky. Rest assured, they are not. All the kerr-azy games hang together on the frame of Deacon’s music which is adventurous, forward-looking and complex. It’s also completely banging. By the end of an epic Wham City (his signature tune) thousands of mad hands are reaching toward a little light bulb that Deacon is holding up as the techno apocalypse crashes all around. Pink Floyd may have lasers and 20 foot high inflatable pigs, but that skull and that little light-bulb are the coolest fucking special effects I’ve seen at a gig. Small is beautiful. I heard this is the last we’ve seen of this incarnation of Deacon. I wonder what his next trick will be?

Richie Lynott? Pic by Loreana Rushe

Jape
Richie Egan must feel the pressure following up Deacon after the hardcore shagging he gave the crowd. It must feel like getting into bed with a spent lover after they’ve done ten rounds with Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt. He even humbly admits toward the end of the gig that he was shitting it. He needn’t have worried. After warming the post-coital crowd up with a few cuts from his solid new record Ritual, things really take off with ‘floating’ and from then on in its a beat-heavy ride to a barn-storming finish with that monster of a track, ‘I was a man’ which plays like ‘floating’’s big brother on ecstasy. The home crowd lap it up. Richie emerges one last time for an encore of newly minted anthem ‘Phil Lynott’ that morphs into a techno kiss-off as a very much alive-and-kicking bass player from Crumlin crowd-surfs through the throngs. Indeed, Jape were so good that midway though their set another Analogue journalist ended up punching himself in the face during a moment of mad self-harming excitement. Rock’n'Roll!

Tags: dan deacon, Deerhunter, future days, high places, jape, live, white williams

Deerhunter

May 19, 2008 by Dar McCaus
Filed under Interviews

5 Comments

Photo, Loreana Rushe

Sometimes great music is cerebral, engaging the brain and gently stroking the synapses. Other times its visceral, punching you hard in the gut and grabbing you by the sex bits. Sometimes, like in the case of Deerhunter’s second album cryptograms, it can be both. In cryptograms, the American noise-rock outfit drew on difficult personal circumstances to record a record that charted a feedback driven course between suffocating freak-outs and blissful psychedelia by way of ambiguous instrumental interludes. It was wayward, challenging and one of the best albums of recent times. After touring the shit out of cryptograms the band returned home late last year feeling knackered and leaving fans worrying that Deerhunter were no more. They went into hibernation and frontman Bradford Cox focused his energy on his sample driven solo work released under the Atlas Sound moniker. One super Atlas Sound album later and it seems the Deerhunter juggernaut is roaring back into life, this time with a bunch of songs that (while still noisy) trade some of the more wigged out elements of cryptograms for a tighter, poppier sound. At the start of their first spate of gigs showcasing material from the forthcoming album microcastle, Analogue interviews the band before a Foggy Notions show in Whelans. Bradford in particular is in ebullient form. With his legs sprawled across the table and his hair falling across his forehead in a boyish bowl-cut, he seems energised, animated and full of opinions.

Analogue: I was a bit presumptuous and thought I was only interviewing Bradford so some of the questions will be directed just to you Bradford. But there are a good few questions that I’d like to direct at the band too?

Bradford Cox (lead singer): That’s totally okay, that’s totally okay.

Analogue: I saw earlier today on your blog you put up some nice photos of you all arriving in Ireland. Was that just this morning or have you been here longer?

Cox: Just this morning. I’ve gotten really quick on Flicker. Really the reason I did that is for my family but I’m also putting it on the blog just to keep the blog active. I was really disappointed with myself when I went on the Atlas sound tour, I just let the blog go dead. The blog is really important for the band, especially now that its straightened up into something that’s really music focused. Rather than just focused on silly things because I really feel like music is changing. The way its made and produced and the rules are kind of becoming more and more useless. For over a year now I’ve been giving away free music as me. It seems like now that’s becoming a more reasonable thing to do. Music doesn’t have to be made and you’ve to wait for months to hear it. I don’t really give a shit about the music press.

Analogue:: Woops

Cox: No I mean there are people in the music press I like but I do resent the way they have come to control the way music is manufactured and produced. They create this 4 month time lag between the creation of art and then it goes through these elitist filters and gets criticized before it reaches the audience. That’s bullshit. What do you think Josh?

Josh Fauver (bass guitar): I think that there’s a lot of industry loopholes you’ve to go through to make music anymore and I think its obnoxious and it hinders the process a lot.

Cox: Specifically the press though. I’m all up for music. I didn’t have much money growing up. But as soon as I heard of stuff like soulseek and napster, I was right on it. Exploring weird stuff like free jazz. Its just a great way to cross reference weird stuff you know.

Analogue: When you talk about the music press then, who are you referring to? Is it the big music websites?

Cox: Not necessarily. I mean the last Breeders album was leaked by a Spanish journalist and suddenly its all over the world.

Analogue: OK but I think even over here, many music fans’ first point of reference for music is the website pitchforkmedia.

Cox: Pitchfork isn’t bad . They won’t leak a record. They won’t compromise your property. As far as I know pitchfork has never done anything like that. Let me tell you something I resent. I resent someone else deciding when to leak your music for you. Like I’m not going to put our new album microcastle on the blog for free. Its an album we worked pretty hard on so its going to be more traditional. I’d like in the future with our albums to do something more unconventional.

Analogue: Like what?

Cox: Maybe give them away for free and sell them on vinyl only. I think CDs are dying. Vinyl, there was an article in a US magazine recently, like business week, and there is a huge surge in vinyl sales. Everyone talks about the failure of the record industry, but I say give the music away and if people like it and you produce something quality then people will want to own it on vinyl. Its an aesthetically interesting format. The music industry has gotten away with some shit over the years. Especially the 50s and 60s, records were like one or two great songs and a bunch of filler. But now people can fucking stream the whole album on myspace and you can hear the single in context with all the filler. So if the album is shit you know in advance and don’t waste your time.

Analogue: There’s a sense of that on your blog. Another band that seems to be happy to let the fans hear new stuff early or work in progress is Animal Collective. There are a lot of high quality recordings of exciting new stuff they are playing live that they seem happy to have out there.

Cox: Yeah their new stuff is really trancey. I’m really excited for them.

Analogue: Yeah I read on your blog that you went to see Animal Collective and it was one of the best gigs you saw. Now that you are touring with them, it got me thinking that one of my dream musical collaborations would be Animal Collective and Atlas Sound (Bradford’s side project).

Cox: You see the thing about these things is, I wouldn’t know where to start. I don’t like to ask people to just do stuff with me. Plus we work with tapes and loops and stuff so it wouldn’t be that easy. But I have a very similar set up live, and I’m sure on this tour people are going to think I’m ripping them off. I think we come from a very similar place in terms of our spirit and what we do, using old sounds, mixing them with new sounds, looping, trance oriented stuff. But the problem a lot of the time, for me working with Animal Collective would mean we all have to load our samplers with new stuff. A lot of what we do is like tape music. So its not like a guitar where you just come up with a new chord. But yeah, I guess, I’ve thought about how cool that would be.

Analogue: Their new stuff is incredible though.

Cox: That’s had some influence on my end of Deerhunter. In an odd way, I’m so into what they are doing right now that its made me want to take Deerhunter in a new direction. They are so good at what they are doing I don’t want to see another band doing that type of music right now because they are pretty much dead on.

Analogue: I don’t think anyone could copy them if they tried.

Cox: Right. But ambience, electronic samples and stuff, and loops, this is the direction I want to go with my writing and this is gonna sound silly but I want Deerhunter to just be a pop band. Art pop, a band that makes records that have odd elements.

Gob tennis

Photo, Loreana Rushe

Analogue:: This question is for Whitney. The last time Deerhunter played they had a different guitarist but now you’ve joined so the band remains a five piece. I believe this is your first live show with the band, how do you feel about going out live for the first time with Deerhunter?

Whitney Petty (guitarist): I puked up outside [laughter].

Cox: Did you?

Petty: Naww just kidding.

Analogue: I want to ask questions about the new record Microcastle. How far along is it? Are you just trying it out live or is it done?

Cox: Its finished. Its totally mixed and done.

Analogue: Are you happy with the finished results?

Cox: Yeah sure.

Analogue: Are you not going to tell me any more than that?

Cox: I was thinking internally, just about mastering tics. Just thinking about that sort of stuff.

Analogue: So what is it? Are you not far away enough from the record to talk about it yet?

Cox: All I know is I think its amazing. I think it’s a classic record.

W: All I know as an outsider, just coming in for the first time and hearing it is that it’s a really, really exciting album to hear. Its awesome.

Cox: I really feel like it’s a lot more put together. Its straightforward and direct. Not as ambiguous.

Analogue: So different to the usual Deerhunter sound then? I read somewhere that it was going to be more poppy?

Cox: Yeah sure. I’m sure its going to piss off some fans. Like some of the small army we’ve had from the start are probably going to be a bit confused and bewildered by why we are not going to go the way they expect. Like I’ve already had messages. Someone already sent me a bizarre message, an analogy that I did not understand. It was “just remember Bradford for every two people that liked crooked rain, crooked rain, there were 10 that hated it”. Like saying Pavement’s early stuff was weird and hard to listen to, but Crooked rain is more accessible but we lost our original fanbase. I don’t know what they were saying. I mean we don’t fucking sound like Pavement.
[Large discussion on the merits of which is the best pavement album ever follows for 2 minutes, then Bradford starts talking about Stephen Malkmus]

Cox: He’s such a snooty…

Analogue: Who is?

Cox: Malkmus.

Analogue: Really? You interviewed him once right?

Cox: I like him though. I don’t like throwing insults around

Analogue: Right what did you say? I wouldn’t know what to say to him. He’s one of those people.

Cox: I got really drunk beforehand so that I wouldn’t be really afraid and make a total ass of myself.

Analogue: well I had a few drinks tonight, just because I didn’t want to make a total arsehole of myself in front of you.

Cox: Oh yeah?

Analogue: I just had this feeling with you that I might say one thing, and you’d eat me for breakfast.

Cox: Well I don’t know why people think that about me, like what could you say?

Analogue: Well I could say something like…ah no.

Cox: What? What? Do it! Do it!

Analogue: Well just from other interviews I’ve read, I could say something like “you sound like a genre of music we call shoegaze. Have you heard of shoegaze?” and then you’d go on the attack.

Cox: I’d just be like, I hate Ride.

Fauver: He would leap across the table and throttle you.

Analogue: Oh yeah I read that somewhere, you hate Ride. Whats that about?

Cox: I hate Ride. They are fucking bad. I think they are one of the cheapest, like in the States you find Ride tapes in all the bins in the 2nd hand shops.

Analogue: At the end of the last tour, at the end you went on hiatus. Or how do you say that in a way that’s not an Irish accent?

Cox: Hi-ay-tus, that’s right.

Analogue: Well it seemed you were finding the cryptograms material wearying to play?

Moses Archuleta (drummer): We had been playing that stuff long before it even came out.

Analogue: But here in Dublin, it didn’t come across. You seemed to play a phenomenal gig from our perspective.

Cox: But that was exceptional. Sometimes things are exceptional.

Archuleta: I mean it was just us sort of going through the motions and we felt that the whole tour. But Dublin was the exception.

Analogue: Irish people, we love hearing bands tell us we’re the best fuckin crowd ever.

Cox: You guys got the one good show of that tour. That was so interpreted. Like a lot of people thought we were going to split up. But it was more of a case of I wanted to be home with my parents.

Analogue: Everyone thought it was the end of Deerhunter. Do you still feel the same way about the cryptograms stuff or now that you are back touring again has your relationship with the material improved?

Cox: I’m so excited to play all our stuff live. Especially now that Whitney’s joined because I had a lot of problems with Colin [the former guitarist] because he wasn’t exactly a team player. I mean I’m not gonna shit talk somebody but his work ethic was really bad. He wasn’t in it for the right reasons. He’s just not compatible with me psychologically. We’ve never had any chemistry. I’m already having a better time with Whitney in the practice sessions. If she doesn’t get a part, I don’t care. She can just make shit up. I’m not super-protective about how I make songs. Some days I am, but its like Colin wasn’t reliable if he was wasted, which was a lot.

Analogue: We met him after the last gig and he was sitting with us.

Cox: He’s such a douche

Analogue: He had drunk a bottle of cough syrup I think.

Cox: Yeah he’s rubbish at holding alcohol.

Analogue: He was pretty drooly, but we were getting on well with him. He didn’t rubbish the band or anything he was just really sort of… on the old cough syrup, the jaw was hanging down wide open.

Cox: Yeah [laughs].

Analogue: To change subject, Bradford you’ve expressed in one or two interviews that there isn’t enough noise or psychosis in indie rock?

Cox: I’ve pretty much given up on indie rock. I hate indie rock. I never listen to it anymore. Because indie rock to me is safe. Like college rock in the 80s. It has a lot to do with like economic oppression. It has a lot to do with rich kids. When I think of indie rock recently I think of sort of bands whose names I won’t mention appropriating African music.

Analogue: Will I say it? Vampire Weekend?

Cox: Yeah. New York, upper West side people.

Analogue: But in relation to what you think about noise. Do you not think that’s changing a bit now with bands like Fuck Buttons?

Cox: I always like a bit of noise, like I like a lot of a little bit of noise I like. That make sense? I mean I don’t like a small level of noise in a song. I mean I like a fucking noisy level of erotic… in my brain noise is what sexuality is in a lot of other people’s brains. I mean I get aroused by noise. I don’t mean physical, I’m being figurative here. But where most people might get lonely or horny or get the urge to give it to somebody or hook up, I get this urge to fucking like hear an exploding guitar sound. Hiss and feedback. Noise to me is like sexuality.

Analogue: Okay like visceral. And you don’t hear that anywhere in indie?

Cox: No not at all. Wait, the Raveonettes. They do a pretty good job. I mean I like Fuck Buttons. What I’m waiting for is a band that can take pop music and do that, not traditional noise pop.

Analogue: I read you say something about Patti Smith.

Cox: Yeah dangerous like Patti Smith. Exactly. And like sexually attractive. That’s what I’m waiting for. That would be my satisfaction.

Analogue: Your jerk-off record of the century?

Cox: Yeah [laughing]

Bradford will be back in Dublin with Atlas Sound supporting Animal Collective in Tripod on Monday May 19th. The entire Deerhunter gang return on June 14th to play Vicar Street with a bunch of other cool bands as part of the Foggy Notions Future Days festival.

Tags: Deerhunter, interview

Cool video for My Car by Atlas Sound

May 13, 2008 by Brendan McGuirk
Filed under Anablog

Deerhunter - White Ink

More acts announced for All Tomorrow’s Parties May 2009

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Future Days Festival: Vicar Street Saturday June 14th

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