ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
Atlas Sound

WHELANS / €15 / 10.30pm

The New York City based experimental musicians return to Dublin. Support from latest 4AD  signings Atlas Sound.

www.paw-tracks.com
www.myspace.com/animalcollectivetheband
www.myspace.com/bradfordcox

Atlas Sound: Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
"The dream of one summer, this last summer I had. It's almost as if I had one continuous dream and the product of archiving it is the album you have here." Bradford Cox
Atlas Sound is the solo moniker of 25 year old Deerhunter frontman / provocateur Bradford Cox. It is also the earliest incarnation for his musical adventures.

Although Let the Blind… is the Georgian's debut album, the genesis of this music can be traced back to when Bradford was a kid, more specifically when in sixth grade; 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. Furthermore, the darker childhood experience of spending an entire summer on a children's hospital ward undergoing operations also (understandably) plays a pivotal part in colouring his music.

Bradford is everything with Atlas Sound and what you hear is a complex, expansive bedroom recording. Totally absorbed and working at a prolific rate, he channels a stream of consciousness, leaving the scorched beauty of his vocals raw and untreated.

Citing the "ideas that I can't make work with a five piece rock band," as the basis of his solo work and unrestricted, he makes an unparalleled meld of garage rock and ambient electronics. A sunken 4/4 techno beat underpinning "Winter Vacation"?  Perfect. Mbira loops running over the top of "Quarantined"?  Just what it needed. An insistent, clipped drum roll carrying "River Card"? Masterful. It's this innate ability to combine all these disparate elements into a singular whole that makes this album such an enjoyable and unique listen.

Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel is a serious body of work that manages to combine seemingly incongruous sound elements to make a wonderfully cohesive pop narrative.
It is also one of the year's first truly great albums.