We just confirmed that Bradford Cox (Atlas Sound, Deerhunter) is doing a very special DJ set at Amoeba Hollywood tomorrow - Wednesday, February 22 - at 6pm! He's in Los Angeles for two sold out Atlas Sound shows at the Center for the Arts in Eagle Rock and we were lucky enough to snag him for a DJ set ahead of those shows.

Atlas Sound is the solo moniker of Deerhunter frontman/provocateur Bradford Cox, so named since 1994 when a sixth-grade Bradford made recordings on a karaoke cassette machine bearing the words "Atlas Sound." His latest album, Parallax, is out now on 4AD.



 

Aaron Detroit, Buyer at Amoeba Hollywood. As you may know, I've worked in Hollywood for 8 years, but started my time with Amoeba - way back in 1998 -  at the San Francisco store. This is my extensive list of 2011 releases that I fell in love with or had hot and heavy affairs with this year.

1. Wild Beasts Smother

In 2008, Brit quartet Wild Beasts released their shaky-legged -but- stunning debut, Limbo Panto. In the four years since, the band has released two thoroughly dazzling masterpiece full-lengths of deceptively delicate indie rock, lyrically bent towards looking in the dark recesses of the heart and libido, largely sung by co-vocalist Hayden Thorpe in his trademark falsetto. Smother finds the band adding a new restraint to their arrangements that allows the tension in the lyrics to hit with hair-on-end chills. It is a singular LP by a singular band that I expect will eventually reach a Radiohead-level stratosphere. 

It looks like we are in the middle of November. I hope you all are ready. The releases keep coming throughout this month. But will soon be slowing down a bit. It has been a busy couple of months. We now need to all take some time and cherish these music releases and give them the time that they deserve. You might need to go back a couple of months and catch up on some new releases you have missed. Or spend some more time with some of the albums that you just didn't have time to listen to. I know that is how I feel. I am in the middle of compiling my top 50 albums of the year. And probably more than half the list will be filled with albums out the last couple of months.

I finally broke open my This Mortal Coil Box set today and I couldn't be happier. I still think it is a bit too expensive for what you get. But it is almost worth it. I guess. I do love This Mortal Coil. I have loved them for so long and spent so much time with these three albums over the last 20 years or so. I guess they deserve me spending some money on them after all they have done for me. I can't really imagine getting through the 90's without This Mortal Coil. They were really not like much else that I listened to. But I needed them. These albums helped me go to sleep at night. They helped me get through the rough times and heartache. The albums are all dark and dreamy. But I never looked at these albums as depressing. There are actually some pop songs on these albums too. They are just all beautiful pieces of art. The artwork is amazing and perfect. And the songs flow great on the albums. I think I actually picked up my first This Mortal Coil album based solely on the artwork. And I may have actually gotten into This Mortal Coil before The Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance. This Mortal Coil was sort of like my gateway drug to 4AD. It was all over at that point. I was hooked for life on 4AD. I posted some info on preordering the box set last month. Here is the info on the This Mortal Coil box set preorder. However, It is of course out now. And I am proud to be in the same company of those of you who preordered the box. I did give you a chance to get it early! We are currently sold out of the box at Amoeba Hollywood. But hopefully will be getting more stock in the next couple of weeks. The albums sound fantastic. Just as great as you remember but better.

My favorite releases of the past few weeks, although I've also been spinning Era Extraña by Neon Indian nonstop lately, get that shite if you haven't yet!

Atlas Sound - Parallax

“Found money and fame/But I found them really lame” Atlas Sound's Bradford Cox says at the outset of his latest release, Parallax. As an ambient-minded artist who also supplies his talents to a more overarching rock band (Deerhunter), Atlas Sound is usually an outlet for Cox's more spectral, less effusive leanings. But, judging by that line, the album cover depicting him as some rockabilly crooner and the still very pop-structured songs on Parallax, Cox doesn't hide his personality behind noise and indechipherable vocals, as some of his contemporaries do. Rather, Atlas Sound seems to be a venue for Cox to try out difference guises — the electro-calypso of “Te Amo,” the, okay yes, croony and swoony “Mona Lisa” and the voiceless but not persona-free ambience of tracks like “Quark Part 1” and “Part 2,” which close out the album on dreamy notes of fluttering piano and gurgling synths, creating a sort of auditory representation of a beautiful aquatic landscape. But mostly, Parallax sounds very much like Cox, with his trademark three-to-four-chord choruses and ability to sneak in clever lines and noisey details where you least expect them.


Blouse - Blouse

Every once in a while a magical sort of album comes out. I guess what is magical to some people is not always magical to everyone else. I am also pretty sure not many people would even use the word magical when describing their new favorite album, but "magical" is exactly the word I feel that best describes the new album by Atlas Sound. It is a bit dreamy and ethereal and ambient. Just all around fantastic. The man behind this new Atlas Sound is Bradford Cox. He is the man behind the band Deerhunter as well. This new album Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel is out on the label Kranky, the same fantastic label that put out the Deerhunter album. I am not always in love with everything Kranky puts out, but every once in a while they put out a fantastic little album like this. I might just really like the label because I like seeing my name on albums and in liner notes. Kranky has put out albums by Labradford, which I have to admit that I bought one day at a record store simply because the band was named after me. The dude in Deerhunter also shares my first name, which is also what I think first intrigued me to pick up the Deerhunter album and give it a listen. These might be selfish reasons but at least they brought me to discover some great albums.

The Atlas Sound album opens up with a tape recording of a young boy telling a ghost story. It is a nice little introduction to this secretly beautiful album. I didn't really fall in love with it the first time that I listened to it. It was not until track 13 that I actually started paying attention. I then went back and started to really appreciate the entire album. I really like albums that take you on a journey. The album may not be full of big amazing powerful songs one after the other-- some of the songs take a while to build up into anything at all, and other songs just sort of fade into each other without any real transition. The album reminds me of Slowdive or Seefeel at times. It could easily fit in with some of the albums that came out of England in the early 90s. Some of the songs could easily lull you to sleep and put you in a nice little dreamland. But if the album is not working for you, just skip ahead to track 13. The song is called "Ativan." He could have easily opened up the album with this song, but it is kind of nice to have a little fantastic surprise saved up for you at the end of the album. Then you can really go back and appreciate the whole album more. The final song is also a great little ambient song to finish of the album for you. This album could easily slip through the year without very many people finding about it, but I think enough people will talk about it and share it with their friends. It could also easily charm its way into everyones music collection.