Post on 29-Mar-2016
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M MG TT
WORLD TOUR 2010
SHIFTINGPSYCHEDELICSHAPE
SHIFTINGPSYCHEDELIC
POP
40 years after the Summer of Love (and 30 years after the Summer of Hate), MGMT is celebrating the grand re-opening of the third eye of the world with Oracular Spectacular, the duo's much anticipated first full-length album, an enigmatic and prophetic collection of hallucinatory sounds and hook-riddled pop tones for the new millennium.
Based in Brooklyn, New York City, the band MGMT comprises Ben Goldwasser and Andrew Van Wyngarden. The duo met at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and formed MGMT aka the Management in 2002, initially as a vehicle for their experiments with synthesizers and drum sounding machines.
Over time the experiments morphed into a full-blown project. The Time To Pretend EP was released on the independent Cantora Records label at the start of 2005, and revealed the duo's penchant for both early Flaming Lips-style psychedelic pop and retro new wave stylings.
After graduating from Wesleyan, the duo toured in support of the EP and relocated to New York after signing a contract with Columbia Records. Their debut album was recorded with the Flaming Lips' producer David Fridmann, and released digitally in October 2007 (and via conventional means at the start of the following year).
The playful Oracular Spectacular blended healthy doses of glam rock and new wave along with psychedelia and acid folk, adding with Fridmann's superb production helping to make sense of the duo's sometimes over reaching ambition.
ANDREW VAN WYNGARDENABOUT THE BAND
BEN GOLDWASSER
As on-campus performance provocateurs,
Andrew and Ben began staging a series of
"these obnoxious, noisy live electronic shows.
We never planned on having it be a recorded
project -- where we would write these weird
techno loops and arrangements that we could
play with live. Most of it was running live off the
computer and we had a turntable plugged into
some guitar pedals, a radio, and a tape player.
It was all electronically generated at that point.
We would write a new song for each show and
our shows would be 15 minutes long."
The One Song/One Show mentality is manifest
in the tracks of Oracular Spectacular, each
song on the album shimmers with its own
diamond-hard compression of elements which
connected within MGMT's "unusual and quite
unconventional pop structures." Continually
inverting expectations, the music of MGMT owes
as much to chaos t heory as it does to fractal
geometry. In contrast to the group's early live
shows, which were mainly electronically
generated, Oracular Spectacular is filled with
"more traditional rock instruments: electric
guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, synthesizers
all played live."
NOISE
MUSIC
Restlessly experimental and consumed with
divine discontent, the members of MGMT
embarked on a series of temporary guises. "We
went on a tour with a drummer once," Andrew
confesses, "after we'd written these weird
California Creedence Clearwater-style songs in
two weeks. We went out, played them, and
never did the songs again. A lot of people hated
it. That used to be the goal of our shows. We
were still trying to be obnoxious and somehow
people got into it. Some songs we wrote just
because we wanted to learn how to be really
bad within a certain genre and then people
started liking the song because they liked the
genre. It was an accident that people started
liking us at all."
Some of those first fans included a group of
NYU students who formed an indie label,
Cantora Records, in order to issue the very
first MGMT commercial release, Time To
Pretend (a 6-song EP, currently available on
iTunes). Two of the songs from that EP -- "Time
To Pretend" (the MGMT "mission statement")
and "Kids" ("filled with all those usual college
feelings: naivety, idealism, nostalgia, happiness,
sadness") -- have made it on to the album
Oracular Spectacular.
ROCK
MUSIC
WHAT HAVE YOU GUYS LISTENED TO THROUGH
THE YEARS THAT HAS INSPIRED YOU TO CREATE
THE MESS THAT IS MGMT? (IT'S A BEAUTIFUL
MESS, BY THE WAY!)
What a great compliment, thank you. We've
always been attracted to what we call creep
balls music, which is just really strange music.
Some people would call it bad, but we call it
good. That’s how we see it.
It's really gross music..
We like gross music, examples Ben...
Erm, Psychic TV maybe?
I guess we like it if it's pretty, but really really
strange. We like Chrome, Spiritualized and
Spacemen 3. A lot of British music too. The
oldies, the goodies!
DO YOU LIKE STUFF LIKE LOOP? IS THAT THE
SORT OF ERA?
Yeah, for sure stonery, psychey....
IS DEAD MEADOW THE KIND OF BAND YOU GUYS
WOULD LIKE TO PLAY WITH IF YOU WENT OUT ON
TOUR?
Yeah, that would be amazing. I wonder if they
would want to play with us though. They are
really nice guys. We hung out with them in
Berlin one time.
SO, 'ORACULAR SPECTACULAR'...THERE IS A
LOT OF MEAT IN THERE. THERE IS A DIFFERENT
FLAVOUR FOR EVERYONE, A BIT OF EVERYTHING.
HOW DO YOU TAKE EVERY INGREDIENT AND END
UP WITH THE PÂTÉ THAT COMES OUT?
A lot of times when we write songs we have had
some kind of influence or a style that we really
want to put into our music. Like, we'll say let's
have that part sound like this and that part
sound like that and then we piece it all together.
We didn't plan anything, it was more of a song
by song thing. We tend to be inspired a lot by
artists that switch genres each album. Each
song is different. 'Legendary Pink Dots' are a
great example of that.
When we were writing the album they were a big
influence. We literally just wrote whatever
came to us. There is a weird combination on the
album because it has a couple of older tracks on
it which were originally electronic with a more
dancey feel. 'Electric Feel' was one of the first
songs we wrote, well the first actual song with
lyrics in it anyway.
IT IS DEFINITELY ONE OF THE STAND OUT SONGS
ON THE ALBUM. YOU RECORDED WITH DAVID
FRIDMAN RIGHT? HE HAS WORKED WITH THE
FLAMING LIPSWHO ARE ONE OF THE MOST
SPECTACULAR BANDS ON THE PLANET. HOW
MUCH OF HIS INFLUENCE WAS HIS PRODUCTION
SKILLS ON THE END RESULT OF YOUR ALBUM?
When we started writing we didn't know that he
was going to produce us. I mean, we had kinda
randomly put him on this list of our top dream
producer's who we would like to work with and
we ended up talking to him on the phone and we
hit it off really well. We love his production
work. I mean, we didn't want to work with him
because we wanted to sound like the Flaming
Lips, it was more that we felt like he understood
us on a personal level and he really got out
music. We were pretty sure after talking to him
that he would make it the album we wanted.
SO, DID DAVID MIX YOUR RECORD AS WELL OR
DID YOU GET SOMEONE ELSE IN TO DO IT?
Dave mixed it and he did a lot of the mastering.
A lot of the album sounds over compressed, like
really mashed. There's times when there is full
mixed distortion, which is crazy, it sounds really
awesome. He ran the whole thing through these
crappy 90's compressors. There are so many
bands that are over compressed so they sound
loud for the radio. I hope our album sounds
loud, but not bad.
Loud loud not bad loud...
Hopefully there is still dynamics.
INTERVIEW
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HAVE YOU HAD ANY RANDOM FACES COME OUT
OF THE WOOD WORK AND SAY 'I'M A BIG FAN OF
MGMT' YET?
Famous people?
YEAH, DEAD PEOPLE, FAMOUS PEOPLE. THEY'RE
ALL THE SAME.
No dead people....
The Kings Of Leon....apparently the drummer
likes us? A lot of model's and fashion people are
getting into the album which is pretty sweet.
WHY IS THAT DO YOU THINK?
I don't really know how it started, but keep it
coming! It’s great!
There is nothing wrong with it. We love being
associated with fashion people and models. Was
that believable? [laughs]
WE ARE ALSO VERY INSPIRED BY THE FANS WHO
BRING US LOTS OF FREE DRUGS AT THE SHOWS.
DOES THIS ACTUALLY HAPPEN, I'VE HEARD THIS
RUMOUR CIRCULATING?
It actually does happen a lot. When we were on
tour in Montreal this last few weeks, like San
Diego, LA...they would be very nice and just give
us stuff. It was trimming season...
TRIMMING SEASON? EXPLAIN THAT, IF YOU
WERE TALKING TO AN ENGLISH PERSON THEY
WOULD PROBABLY THINK YOU WERE TALKING
ABOUT HAVING A 'PERSONAL HEDGE TRIM' IF
YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN?
Basically it's the harvest season, people help
with the crops and it filters through down
California to San Francisco and they gave us
some really nice presents!
DO YOU LIKE PRESENTS, ARE YOU INTO PEOPLE
BRINGING YOU PRESENTS WHEN YOU PLAY?
Yeah, it's sort of this tradition..
DO YOU THEN GIVE PRESENTS BACK TO THE
AUDIENCE? FOR EXAMPLE, THE DRUMMER OF
PAVEMENT USED TO MAKE TOAST FOR PEOPLE
IN THE CROWD.
Toast?! Erm, well we have given cookies. There
was one show when we cut open this fruit called
a Dorian, it's the king of all fruits. It's the very
smelliest fruit in the world. It's kinda like bacon
and onions mixed with rotting flesh. In fact, it's
garlic rotting flesh.
WHAT ARE YOUR TWO FAVORITE TRACKS OFF
THE RECORD...ONE EACH...
I think my favorite track from the album is
probably 'The Youth'
Mine would be '4th Dimensional Transitional'
because it is the least appreciated. It's almost
as if no one acknowledges that it exists. We
decided that the song is four dimensional and
some people can only see three dimensions.
NEXT YEAR OBVIOUSLY YOU GUYS ARE GOING TO
BE COMING BACK TO RELEASE THE ALBUM AND
AFTER THAT ARE YOU THEN THINKING OF WORLD
DOMINATION ON A MAJOR SCALE?
We would really love to go to South America or
Mexico. I think I want to live in Mexico...
THE PRESENTS WOULD BE RAD...
Yeah, cactus stuff. We still have that mentality
where we wanna wear fur coats and always be
making the music we want to make and being
good dudes. No one likes assholes. It's annoying
when people turn into assholes, we never want
to be like that.
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2005TIME TO PRETEND
2008METANOIA
2005CLIMBINGTO NEW LOWS
DISCOGRAPHYOracular Spectacular is the first major label
studio album by Brooklyn, New York indie rock
band MGMT, released digitally October 2, 2007
on Columbia Records, available in CD and LP
formats from January 22, 2008. The album,
which has sold over 1 million copies worldwide,
was nominated for best international album in
the 2009 BRIT Awards. It features new versions
of both "Kids" and "Time to Pretend", songs
from their previous release, Time to Pretend EP
(2005), the opening track serving as a "mission
statement" and theme continued through the
proceeding tracks.Pitchfork Media compared
MGMT to Muse and Mew, but weaving in an early
90s Britpop sound. Prefix Magazine said the
album "sounds like a college-dorm experiment
gone horribly right." It was named the best
album of 2008 by NME. In 2009, Rolling Stone
named it the 18th best album of the decade.
2007ORACULARSPECTACULAR
CONGRATULATIONS2010 • •
I think music is a feeling Music is passion and music is pure joy
Music is spiritual mass[ANDREW]
I Found A Whistle
Brian Eno
Pieces Of What
Weekend Wars
Song For Dan Treacy
The Youth
Flash Delirium
Electric Feel
Siberian Breaks
Someone's Missing
Time To Pretend
It's Working
SET LIST
Music is spiritual mass
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02
04
17
20
23
27
06
28
12
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30
02
11
18
2010JAN
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TOUR DATES
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WWW.MGMT.COM
WWW.MGMT.COM
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