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.