Search - Music Tapes :: Music Tapes for Clouds & Tornadoes

After 9 years, finally a follow-up to their debut

a concerned citizen | pa | 08/25/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Compared to their first album (an intricate pop masterpiece), this new one is more stripped-down and folky. There are some catchy tunes and some with long, drawn out melodies that take their sweet time to unravel in your brain, but after numerous listens every song is worthwhile and distinct. The production is awesome and organic -- instrumentation piles up without ever sounding too busy or cluttered, and the use of antique recording equipment imbues each song with an otherworldly appeal removed from time and place.



I would whole-heartedly recommend this album for any Neutral Milk Hotel fan looking to check out other related bands, or to anyone who enjoys reveling in the works of eccentric artists and their idiosyncratic worlds of sound."

Freedom for reindeer

E. A Solinas | MD USA | 08/21/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Somehow the Music Tapes' first album "1st Imaginary Symphony for Nomad" never grew on me -- it sounded like a brilliant album that was picked before it could bloom.



But the most blandly-named band of the Elephant 6 Collective succeeded in snagging my ear with the second time round the musical saw. "Music Tapes for Clouds and Tornadoes" is an unpretentiously weird little album with a slightly unearthly sound, and lots of lo-fi folky instrumentation. It sounds a little like a folk band is being haunted by a singing ghost, if that makes any sense at all.



"Saw Ping Pong And Orchestra" introduces us to the singing saw right away, which ends up warbling alongside Julian Koster and some violins. And "Schedrevka" is much the same... except with no violins or singing.



And then finally we get to the actual songs -- a slow-moving banjo tune, overlaid with Koster's off-key voice ("Tiiiired of reindeer/sporting Santa Claus...") in a song about, um, freeing the reindeer. Then the band goes all out into a hurricane of clanking instruments and woobling windy sound effects, making it sounds like a bunch of musical spirits are joining in a chorale.



"Nimbus Stratus Cirrus" is a bouncy piano melody draped in bells and woobling, leading into a string of even weirder songs -- an accordion tune also called "Freeing Song By Reindeer" (note the "BY"), a languid banjo-folk tune, a crackly lament, shimmering minute-long interludes, energetic horn-filled stompfests, and a vaguely tribal finale full of bells, cymbals, and rhythmic drumming.



"Music Tapes for Clouds & Tornadoes" is about as lo-fi as a psychedelic album can possibly get, and about as weird as one would expect an Elephant 6 album to be, even from one of its lesser-known bands. The Collective's bands are known for embodying a post-Beach-Boys psychedelic sound, but the Music Tapes honestly sound more like an out-in-the-sticks band just jamming around. With a ghost, of course.



I honestly don't detect a single shred of actual keyboard in this album -- it's all about the singing saw, which alternately sounds like high-pitched whooping and warbling synth. This is used to add a ghostly, otherworldly sound to the otherwise down-to-earth instrumentation -- a steely banjo, accordion, clattering drums and the occasional round of shaken bells.



And Koster -- whom I suspect is a bit mad -- is the finishing touch to all this. His voice yowls and wails and murmurs, slightly off-key and warbly. And the lyrics are no less odd -- at various points he demands reindeer freedom, yells the names of various clouds, and contemplates the descent of the ocean from above ("The ocean is falling/out of the sky/grand piano sinking in the surf/turning in the waves....").



Rather the sunny psychedelica and colourful experimentals one would expect from the Elephant 6 bands, "Music Tapes for Clouds & Tornadoes" is a bittersweet and slightly humorous little folk experience. Just weird enough to be endearing, just pretty enough to be instantly likable."

One of the best and most joltingly affecting and honest albu

Rowan A. Smith | 11/30/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I had known of The Music Tapes for a long time. Knowing them as what they are best known for, "That band that the guy from Neutral Milk Hotel is in". I, like thousands of others, had my NMH phase where I spent months devoted to exclusively listening to In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, learning all of the songs on guitar, and wondering about the same things all other fans of that album wonder about.



As time went on, I found myself more immersed in the other bands of E6. I stand to this day as saying that Dusk At Cubist Castle by OTC is a better album then Aeroplane, but that's just opinions. I basically found Aeroplane to be the most obvious and accessible piece of what E6 does: Take Folk and 60's Pop and add two cups weird and one cup noise.



After the first time I listened to this album I knew it was important. The third time I knew I loved it. The fifth time I thought it might be the best thing of the year. The tenth time I thought it might be one of the best of the last couple years. The twentieth time it was one of my favorites ever.



I don't know, maybe it's timing, maybe it's the honesty in Julian's voice. People who complain about people having "a bad voice" is something that doesn't make sense to me. They don't have a bad voice, they just have a differente timbre to their voice. And in my opinion people who have different timbres are just like strange newfound instruments, they draw your attention and interest you more, because it's something new. Much like the Singing Saw, an instrument Julian loves dearly.



I met Julian when he Caroled at my house. He isn't pretentious, he's just an odd guy who is in love with magic and the world. I feel that more then anything he just enjoys making people happy, and making people feel that childish wonder that they lost so long ago.



Music Tapes for Clouds and Tornadoes was described by him as being a family, with each song being some sibling to a larger parent, and that's about the most perfect way to say it that I could think of. It is a world that you lose yourself in, and it is one of the most freeing and impacting pieces of music I've ever heard."