Personal Music Taste

My favourite genre of music is alternative/jazz music. I enjoy listening to both, but have been listening to predominately alternative music for the past 11 years.

My favourite band is probably Neutral Milk Hotel. Neutral Milk Hotel is part of the Elephant Six recording company, which has bands such as the Olivia Tremor Control, The Apples in Stereo, Of Montreal etc, who all have similar experimental sounds  

The albums of the Elephant Six bands are very rare to find, but I have two Neutral Milk Hotel LPs and digital download copies of both of them.








What I like about the bands in this recording company are that they all create music for the sake of creating music. When NMH got large recognition for their second album in 2004 (as shown by the below surprise endorsement), all band members went into hiding, and stopped making music. 

It would be 10 years until they did a tour and came into the public eye again. In addition to making music for creative and non profitable reasons, all the bands are experimental, using odd instruments, e.g. a singing saw or organs or synthesizers that are controlled by brain waves which the band created, called a Teletron.  

In addition to this, The Apples in Stereo created their own music scale, called the ‘Non-Pythagorean’ music scale. All band members have a PhD in mathematics, so their music is very well composed and detailed.




I found out about Neutral Milk Hotel, and hence the Elephant Six, through an episode of Parks and Recreation. The screen cap is below.


Once I saw this, and knowing about the character, who had an obscure taste in music, I researched and listened to the band. I have been listening to them ever since. As NMH started the Elephant 6, it was easy then to find the other bands under the same label.


Unfortunately in my lifetime, Neutral Milk Hotel have only done one show live. This show I missed unfortunately, whilst I was in the process of moving. In addition to this, the other bands I listen to have either long since ceased making music, or only tour in certain states in the USA. I have seen one “alternative” band live, however, Foster The People in 2011, in Singapore during their Asia tour.



Due to the band’s lack of wanting to promote or advertise their music, only some of the Elephant 6 bands produced music videos. An example of one is found below, The Apples In Stereo 2010 music video for their single “Time Pilot,” from their 3 album, ‘Travellers in Space and Time.”

I find that this music video illustrates the obscurity and experimental nature of the band. Its use of aesthetically pleasing stop motion, in conjunction with the music, creates an overall pleasurable media product. However, this product is not likely to sell or promote the band, which is the main intention of music videos.

Below is the website of Neutral Milk Hotel. It’s minimalistic, but conveys the band’s intentions; getting people to hear their music, regardless of a fee.

https://walkingwallofwords.com/

To sum up NMH’s ideologies and specifically their lead singer, Jeff Magnum, I will use this quote by Pitchfork to describe their latest album, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea:  “[Mangum] gnashes his teeth at the fabric of time, then wraps himself in it like a blanket, channeling the violence of his personal past through a claustrophobic frustration with his dejected present.”

The songs they write are very much personal and incredibly creative. In an interview with Pitchfork magazine, the band’s lead signer said: "The songs sort of come out spontaneously and it'll take me awhile to figure out what exactly is happening lyrically, what kind of story I'm telling. Then I start building little bridges-- word bridges-- to make everything go from one point to the next point to the next point until it reaches the end. A continuous stream of words keeps coming out like little blobs, usually in some sort of order. They come at me at random and I have to piece them together."