Send "Atlas Sound " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Sputnikmusic |
 Last year’s Microcastle was quite the anomaly: it found Deerhunter, a fast-ascending band then known only for their discordant earlier albums and their kinda-annoying frontman, sharpening their sound, lessening the enveloping noise in favor of a more dreamier and lulling approach, and thus making their skewed psychedelia more accessible. But Microcastle wasn’t really that---accessible---instead being fragmented and moody, built on tracks that ran seamlessly into one another rather than focusing on really great songs (even though “Nothing Ever Happened” actually is a really, really great song). Perhaps this was the reason that I’ve always held a weird opinion of the album. At times, when the mood struck or whatever the fuck, I couldn’t stop listening to Microcastle; at another time, I’d be deleting the album off my computer. Perhaps this was also the reason why I was so wary of Logos, the fourth solo album from Bradford Cox (again operating under the alias of Atlas Sound), Deerhunter’s aforementioned “kinda-annoying frontman”. Not that I wouldn’t give it a shot, but I was hesitant to: all of the ups-and-downs and growing-ons/growing-offs of Microcastle made it a difficult album to love; was Logos going to be the same? Thankfully, no. Which is weird: Logos is Cox’s most varied album to date; it’s also his least cohesive. If anything, this should be problematic, but it’s not: there’s something about the way “Walkabout”, a bouncy summer jam that recalls water parks and 60s nostalgia, is placed after two melancholy and autumnal songs. Or “Quick Canal”, an inexplicable Krautrock-influenced monster---one that features absolutely none of Cox’s ethereal vocals, instead featuring Laetitia Sadier---that looms over the rest of the album like a sore thumb. These songs don’t make sense, especially compared to the bulk of Logos, which is mostly a sad, intimate album, combining some of Cox’s best lyrics with acoustically led songs and a fair share of vocal effects and electronics; best shown on “Kid Klimax” and “Attic Lights”. But that’s what makes Logos such an interesting listen: it, like the recently released Embryonic, throws all cohesiveness to the wind, preferring to be something that doesn’t really flow; thus every song stands out on its own. There aren’t any lazy or muddled instrumentals here; Logos instead asks, why waste album space for those when you can just have another song?...full text |
| State |
| Prolific and prodigious is there anything the profusely talented Bradford Cox can’t do? What with his day job in swoon-inducing noise merchants Deerhunter and his continuous array of cover versions, instrumentals and scraps of new work that comprise his ever popular blog and this, his second solo outing under the Atlas Sound moniker, he barely has time to blink. The urgency and scary efficiency in releasing all this work seem to act like a soothing influence as if to calm the constant looping soundtrack in his head, rather than the ‘band as graft’ work ethic of his artistically fertile counterpart Mark E. Smith. Although the alarming production speed does not make ‘Logos’ a fuzzy, haphazard affair, in fact it’s quite the opposite. If his debut effort ‘The Blind Lead Those Who See But Cannot Feel’ was a D.I.Y bedroom effort, all hazy stream- of -consciousness and much scrutinised first-person lyrics, ‘Logos’ is a more structured and wilfully obtuse album by design, focusing on artful soundscapes and Cox’s ability to bend melodies to exquisite, dazzling effects....full text |
| Musicomh |
| Bradford Cox is the archetypal late-noughties indie musician. He's used the internet to release dozens of tracks - at times knowingly, at other times not. Logos - his second album under his Atlas Sound moniker - has already fallen victim to an unintended transmission into cyberspace: demos of its songs were leaked early last year, prompting an expletive-ridden rant from Cox and one of those briefly exciting but ultimately meaningless internet dramas. But Cox doesn't just deploy the 'net as a means of getting his music to his fans. He also uses it to subvert the traditional image of the rock star as mysterious entity. He's open about everything, not least when he and his regular band Deerhunter blogged about their defacatory habits via a 'poop blog'. Brilliantly (and rather less unpleasantly), when asked about his lyrical themes - a question that would normally elicit some imbecilic response like 'Y'know, I just wanna let the songs speak for themselves' - Cox responded with an impromptu track-by-track analysis of the meanings of each and every track on the first Atlas Sound album, last year's Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Not Feel. His candid interviews reveal a man who's intelligent, funny and, more importantly, in thrall to the potency of music as an art form....full text |
Atlas Sound lyrics
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