Send "Atlas Sound " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Back before we could follow an artist's every move on Twitter, Bradford Cox was life-streaming on his band's blog, generously offering demos, mixtapes, rants, and a look inside his creative process. That mostly came to an end after the Microcastle leak turned ugly, when the previously fun back-and-forth between Cox and fans became, for him, a burden or cause of personal anxiety. Can't blame the guy: If you've ever been caught up in Internet drama, you know how shitty it feels. But Cox is still an incredibly prolific musician, and every now and again he logs onto the old site and dumps a whole heap of unreleased tracks for fans to enjoy.This is one of the great things about Internet-era listening: Instead of waiting around for months for your favorite band to drop another label album, one morning you wake up and you've got two and a half hours' worth of brand-new material to sort through. It can also be overwhelming, of course, because when the new-music faucet never shuts off, you're constantly playing catch-up. This volume of songs from Cox's Atlas Sound guise pretty much typifies that feeling of music overload-- some of it's great, some of it isn't, and you have to show a good amount of patience to sift through it all in order to find the gems. Recorded over 2010 at Cox's home and in his band's Notown studio in Atlanta, Bedroom Databank is four albums' worth of tossed-off ditties and more fully fleshed-out demos. Sonically, the collection runs from straightforward folk-pop to electronic instrumentals and songs that fall somewhere in between. The folk element is one of the first things that stands out: Generally, we think of Cox as a boundary pusher (and he is), but the more music we hear from him, the more he also comes across like a traditional singer-songwriter who really loves Bob Dylan and Neil Young. About half of this set consists of simple, waltz-time ballads recorded with a harmonica and acoustic guitar. The cool thing about these country-tinged numbers is that they put Cox's lyrical content right out in the open. He's obscured words in noise and reverb plenty in the past, but he's a better songwriter than he often gets credit for, and here we get a clearer look at that part of his work. Favoring cryptic turns of phrase over straightforward storytelling, he sings about mundane stuff like getting older and more jaded in a way that makes it feel emotionally rich and sometimes very sad. The track "New Romantic" is an example: "Please don't forget your hometown/ You used to see your friends/ You used to have good friends." Or "How to Pass the Time", which has a similar loss-of-innocence theme: "Your laughter used to ring out so loud/ Why can't you remember that now?"...full text |
| Thequietus |
| There are many ways to describe Bradford Cox - lazy wouldn't be one of them. Barely a year goes by without him releasing something under either his Deerhunter or Atlas Sound moniker. 2010, in fact, saw Deerhunter release the excellent Halycon Digest, a sprawling 60s pop-tinged waltz through Cox's ever-present love of shoegaze. What we couldn't have imagined though, is the release, two weeks ago of a series of records all spewed forth via Cox's own blog. Some of these were recorded in the days leading up to their release and some recorded live in hotel rooms across the globe during Cox's recent touring. What's amazing about these four, pretty much full-length albums, is the quality of the tracks on offer. It doesn't feel like he's just thrown some tapes down the steps of the attic and straight onto the internet. Though, after the take-down notice from Sony which caused Cox some grief (probably due to his charmingly irregular cover of 'This Wheel's on Fire'), he might have wished he'd left them in the attic... Given the nature of these releases, it's hard to really fault what's on offer. The sheer volume of material means that there are a couple of clunkers, some meandering ideas that get stuck in that revolving door of chords and never mature. But that's to be expected. The highlights are the little dabbles with electronica that whisk their way into the predominately ramshackle guitar pieces. 'Afternoon Drive' and 'Postcard' both brim with a Spring-like brightness. The latter is surely a nod towards Reich with its glittering repetitiveness. 'Farmland Fantasy' is piece of squelchy ambiance that might be Eno through the looking-glass....full text |
| Mishkanyc |
| Atlas Sound is not simply the name of a vintage tape recorder highly sought after by the world’s most ubiquitous hipster, it also happens to be the name of Bradford Cox’s solo project. The Deerhunter singer and lead guitarist hails from Athens, Georgia, a city with a real indie-rock lineage. Yet far from another highly revered Athenian Michael Stipe (R.E.M.), Cox writes in a stream of consciousness, and this is probably why his recent Bedroom Databank project comes in four volumes. Ranging from obscure and glitch laden melody lines, to the more basic acoustic/voice setup, Cox composes an ambient soundtrack to a questionable youth. Cox speaks of his frenetically thrown together tracks as at times “getting crowded” and I’d be inclined to agree with him. However, the honesty of Bedroom Databank as a home taping, brings with it an innocence and musical purity that falls somewhere between glaring pretentiousness and mild genius. However, being the majority of the brains behind Deerhunter, I’m siding with mild genius, and while the four volumes aren’t the easiest thing to kick back and listen to, there are some gems that are worth digging out: “Yards of Silk,” and the alternative version of “Mona Lisa” on Volume 3 are personal favorites, while “How to Pass the Time” features unaffected vocals, harmonica and acoustic strumming, truly indicating Cox’s versatility and musicianship that impresses over and above his electronic work. Volume 1 is the most electronic sounding, while Volume 2 is the most vocally raw, particularly evident in “Here Come the Trains,” which is not too dissimilar to crooning of Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas with his recent solo work. For those with only time for one of the records, I’d recommend going with Volume 4, for it shows Cox at his strongest musically, and features a stripped down sound that would place him among the great singer-songwriters in present day music....full text |
Atlas Sound lyrics
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