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Wednesday :: August 29, 2007

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deerhunter

Deerhunter - "So Long"

This week's inaugural tune is an ethereal dispatch from buzzy Atlanta psych-rockers Deerhunter. Here's frontman Bradford Cox on the inspiration behind "So Long":

"This is like Atlanta history: My dad attempted to have a mortgage business in a very ghetto way. He had this building in Marietta, a city outside of Atlanta, basically the conservative Mecca of the '90s right-wing revival. It was this old building in the historic district, a haunted-ass cobwebby storefront, and the back of it was this triangular warehouse he let me take over: We had a Xerox machine and broken 4-tracks and we'd make fliers and fanzines and all played around and made tapes. I recorded the majority of the song there in one night. It's a personal Polaroid or snapshot.

"The first half of it's based off of samples from the time we tried to record Cryptograms with Samara Lubelski. The second half's a tape collage, a sample from the Flamingos 'Golden Teardrops' run through an archaic sampler just to loop it, and cut-up tape stuff from a religious sermon record called, I think, 'The Reverend Jimmy L Jones.' Those old crackly, kinda distorted recordings of congregations singing and black preachers have always sounded haunted to me.

"It's something I put on mix tapes to bridge. I'd make a friend a mix tape and there'd be a Beat Happening song and I'd fade into this at the end, so it's like, 'So long, see ya.' I'm really into coda's and afterwards -- my favorite part of the movie is always the ending -- and I've always enjoyed juxtaposing two dissonant or disparate recordings. When we did Cryptograms, I wanted 'Heatherwood' to be different than anything else on the record. That's the whole craft of mixtapes and making albums or writing books or making a movie or editing. I just love editing and the way you can juxtapose different tensions and releases."


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Chew On This: highlights from the last week
New Rilo Kiley Video - "Silver Lining" »
Under The Blacklight's been dividing our readers into passionate pro 'n' con camps, but the video for "Silver Lining" is getting 'em to agree on a few things: Jenny Lewis looks good in a wedding dress, Blake Sennett isn't very tall, and it completely sucks to be left at the altar.

Premature Evaluation: Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover »
After listening to Sunset Rubdown's new album, some of our readers are ranking Spencer Krug's knotty pop vision quest with the likes of Lennon, Dylan, and Bowie while others "can't help but think it sounds like every other Montreal-influenced band that involves members from Wolf Parade" ... or worse.

Travis Morrison Grades Pitchfork »
Ex-Dismemberment Planner Travis Morrison, who infamously received a 0.0 from Pitchfork for his solo debut Travistan, talks to Stereogum about "the Fork's" double goose-egging of the This Is Next compilation.

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Justin Timberlake on HBO- Labor Day, 9/3 at 9PM »
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