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Black Foliage

The internet as it was in 2003 alerted me to the existence of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel, and, when I fell in love with that album myself the following year, the internet further explained that it had come out of something called the 'Elephant 6 Collective', an umbrella in whose shade numerous bands hand flourished, one of the most notable of them being The Olivia Tremor Control. Curious, I sought out the OTC albums on CD, acquiring them in reverse order, getting the second (and to my mind, the better) of them first.

I fell for Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume One too. It's determinedly psychedelic record where Beach Boys and Beatles-inspired melodies and harmonies alternate with (or are overlain by) musique concrète-style tape manipulations, and where the lyrics recount a longing for, and a striving towards the otherworldly. I loved the songs but the sound quality on the CD left something to be desired: I imagined that may have been attributable to much of the album having been recorded in a kind of baroque lo-fi, with heavily overdubbed harmonies and effects all done in unsophisticated home studio set-ups.

Last year I went through a phase of replacing some of my Elephant 6 CDs with vinyl, this album included. Having been unable to find a copy of the LP anywhere else in the UK, I resorted to buying it from Amazon, a retailer I now prefer to avoid. This 2011 'Chunklet Magazine' re-issue (or more recent re-press of the same) sounds considerably better than my CD copy ever did, and the cover art benefits from having more breathing-space, so I don't regret paying the £25 asking price. Favourite tracks include 'I Have Been Floated', 'A Place We Have Been To', 'The Sylvan Screen', 'California Demise (3)' and the rousing finalé 'Hilltop Procession (Momentum Gaining)', but there are many other joys throughout.

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