Atlas Sound
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’.
Though it was Cox’s earliest musical incarnation, it wasn’t until 2008 that the
first Atlas Sound album emerged, Let The Blind Lead Those Who See But Cannot
Feel. The genesis of the record can be traced back to those sixth-grade musical
experiments; a time when he discovered through reading a Beck interview that
his family’s disused karaoke machine could be used as a rudimentary
multi-tracking device. As Cox’s tirelessly updated blog attests, with its
caverns of freely available covers, demos and mixtapes, such recording processes
are central to his music, colouring the intimate feel of Atlas Sound in a
manner more apparent than when writing under the guise of Deerhunter.
If its predecessor was a record of fragile beauty and acute experimentalism
that spoke of its bedroom genesis, the second Atlas Sound album, Logos arrived
in 2009 with a far more rooted pop sensibility. Featuring collaborations with
Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox and Laetitia Sadler of Stereolab, the album
expanded on the often-insular tendencies of the first Atlas Sound record, this
time outward gazing and almost sunshine loving in its ebullience. Moving away
from piercing introspection and towards a grand pop plateau, Cox managed to
translate his music into a more universally engaging form while retaining the intimate
charms of the project.
Citing the “ideas that I can't make work with a five piece rock band” as the
basis of his solo material, Cox’s work as Atlas Sound represents a feral and
prolific musical voice. With its scorched beauty, stream of consciousness, and
wonderfully cohesive pop narrative, Atlas Sound is another outlet for Cox’s
relentless creativity, distinctly remaining the product of just one man’s
vision.
The third Atlas Sound album, Parallax, will be released on November 7th
2011. Produced by both Bradford and Nicolas Vernhes, and recorded and mixed by
Vernhes at the Rare at Book Room in Brooklyn, N.Y. in June 2011, the twelve
tracks display a clearer refining of Cox's muse, further marking him out as a
definitively singular voice.
