Over the past few years 4AD have been posting specially recorded studio performances from artists in their roster. They’re now releasing a compilation of those sessions, featuring tracks by Deerhunter, Twin Shadow and Ariel Pink, in a limited vinyl release. Download a free digital version here and possibly win a copy on vinyl.

It’s become tradition for Deerhunter fans to expect a new Atlas Sound album to follow a Deerhunter album. Given the success of Deerhunter’s Halcyon Days who could begrudge Bradford Cox not wanting to strike while the muse is still hot and prep an entirely new (ie: non-blog leaked) release? Due out on 4AD on November 8 will be the third Atlas Sound album entitled Parallax, the follow-up to 2009′s Logos. No word as yet if this is Cox alone or with special guests. The website for Parallax offers scant details, bar a scrolling landscape and genre-defining the album as ‘Science Fiction’. Well, alright then.

The album sleeve (see below) taken by famed photographer Mick Rock has Cox in torch song singer repose, looking straight out of David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet”. If this is any indication of what to expect, things are definitely about to get interesting. For a taste of what to expect, 4AD have offered up a preview from Parallax in form of the 6 minute acoustic track “Terra Incognita” which takes things in a drifting Red House Painters-like direction. How this holds up for the rest of the album, November 8 is the date to remember. Download “Terra Incognita” here.

01. The Shakes
02. Amplifiers
03. Te Amo
04. Parallax
05. Modern Aquatic Nightsongs
06. Mona Lisa
07. Praying Man
08. Doldrums
09. My Angel Is Broken
10. Terra Incognita
11. Flagstaff
12. Nightworks

Deerhunter
Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London
March 31, 2011

With each successive show played in London growing in size from venue to venue, it’s a clear indication of the steady rise of this much loved Atlanta four-piece, and with Shepherd’s Bush Empire being sold out, it’s their largest capacity UK headline show to date. For the ardent, precious fan, Deerhunter aren’t your band anymore. The era of slipping into town for a small club tour is over, but from the staid, somewhat bemused crowd, Deerhunter are still an acquired taste, one that’s seemingly unlikely to assail the upper reaches of the charts like label-mates, The National.

Their fourth album Halcyon Digest showed the evolution of a band who refine and explore their sound with each release — mixing up shoegaze and folk-tinged pop with more experimental, looped sounds. Live, Deerhunter aren’t an easy band to pin down. Having released Halcyon Digest back in September, an album that is probably old to them (more so to workaholic frontman Bradford Cox who moonlights as Atlas Sound), they choose to open with an entirely new song whipped up a few days ago at sound check in Glasgow. The track “60 Cycle Hum” is Blondie’s “Dreaming” meets Joy Division’s “Transmission” and it’s brilliant.

Likewise a later cover of Magazine’s “The Light Pours Out Of Me”, Bradford taking on Howard Devoto’s gritted teeth delivery while sticking close to the original. This runs counter to the reworking of some of the pre-Halcyon Digest material that appear to have been given new introductions (“Rainwater Cassette Exchange”) or balloon out into frenzied mid-jam monologues, like Microcastle’s “Nothing Ever Happened” (one of the show’s highlights) as Bradford burrows into Patti Smith’s “Horses”. Of the newer songs, guitarist Lockett Pundt’s “Desire Lines”, and Bradford’s “He Would’ve Laughed” showcase the band’s inner beauty while strung out under the weight of their own lyrical introspection.

Closing out with “Octet”, their indie hypno-funk dancefloor crossover that never happened (think My Bloody Valentine’s “Soon” but with a whirlpool bassline) it becomes clear that the only thing that could’ve made this show better is if they handed out drugs at the door. But that would be illegal and kids, drugs are uncool and you should go to school and listen to your parents, lest you turn into a bunch of psychedelic shoegaze pushing musos on a highway to HELL.

Setlist: 60 Cycle Hum/Desire Lines/Hazel Street/Don’t Cry/The Light Pours Out Of Me/Rainwater Cassette Exchange/Little Kids/Memory Boy/Nothing Ever Happened/Helicopter/He Would’ve Laughed//Cover Me (Slowly)/Agoraphobia/Octet

Atlanta four-piece Deerhunter make their long-awaited return to the UK this week, beginning this Saturday (March 26) in Belfast at The Stiff Kitten (oh, the Irish and their romantic pub names). Their first full European tour since 2009, the trip is also the first chance for British fans to hear tracks from the group’s acclaimed fourth album, Halcyon Digest, since its September release last year. Impatient as ever, Webcuts snuck over to Los Angeles to catch the tail end of their American tour (running into Bradford Cox record shopping in Amoeba) and was stunned by the epic transformation of the Halcyon tracks live.

To coincide with the shows, Deerhunter will release the single “Memory Boy” on 7″ and digital download. Backed with a new track ‘Nosebleed’, it will be widely available from April 11 but those going to forthcoming live shows will be able to pick up copies of the 7″ early.

In addition to their headline tour this month, Deerhunter have also confirmed they will appear alongside the likes of The National and Esben And The Witch at this year’s Latitude Festival in July. Frontman Bradford Cox’s Atlas Sound solo project will also be a guest at the Animal Collective-curated All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival in May.

Deerhunter – UK Tour

March 26 – The Stiff Kitten, Belfast
March 28 – Oran Mor, Glasgow (SOLD OUT)
March 29 – The Irish Centre, Leeds
March 30 – Sound Control, Manchester
March 31 – Shepherds Bush Empire, London (SOLD OUT)
May 13-15 – All Tomorrow’s Parties, Minehead (Atlas Sound show)
July 14-17 – Latitude Festival, Suffolk

Support comes from Lower Dens.

While the devastation caused by mass flooding in Brisbane recently is going to mean one hell of a clean up, the upcoming Laneway festival will still go ahead in that city and could be a ray of sunshine to look forward to in a couple of weeks. Laneway has also expanded its wings to include South East Asia with a special cutdown Singapore version (no timetable clashes there!), and New Zealand is once again in the mix with an Auckland date. All cities except for Sydney and Melbourne still have tickets available at the Laneway website. In breaking news the timetables for all dates have been posted, again check the Laneway website for your city.

Name (Bris time)	I should see them because	They’ll look sorta like
Toy Balloon (2:00-2:40pm)	For Brisbane punters it will worth while getting down to the festival early for this omnipresent touring four piece. Presently recording their second album the last show we witnessed of theirs at the final Hangar was one big sweaty party led by the super Coopers, siblings Greg and Chloë Cooper, with electro, rock, funk and soul all in the mix.
Rat Vs Possum (2:15-2:45pm)	The live shows of this five piece electro tribal-pop act from Melbourne are also the stuff of legend. Expect more percussion than David Byrne and Peter Gabriel put together, huge walls of synth sound and chanting galore.
Beach House (4:40-5:25pm)	Teen Dream from the Baltimore dream pop duo of Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally is still reverberating on our stereos a year after release and at Primavera last year we were amazed at Legrand’s transformation into “a more subdued version of the siren of song, Stevie Nicks”
Les Savy Fav (7:40-8:25pm)	They produced one of the best albums of last year with the riotous Root to Ruin and their live shows, especially the antics of fat, bald and proud singer Tim Harrington are the stuff of legend. Just don’t get too close to the man.
Deerhunter (7:50-8.35pm)	They wowed us and fellow Australians in 2009 on the back of Microcastle and while new disc Halcyon Digest doesn’t quite reach those unscalable heights it is still worth the price of admission. So will seeing them live.
Foals (8:35-9:20pm)	Foals’s Total Life Forever was this writers favourite album of 2010. Making a mockery of any “indie” categorisation the album showed versatility and adeptness across multiple genres – math rock, indie-dance, rock, funk and dream-pop – blended into one beautiful record.

So that was 2010. What does Webcuts remember most about it? It’s hard to say, really. The landscapes shift, the memories flickr and 365 days blur into one long unending soundtrack. Webcuts lived vicariously through 2010, almost surprisingly so for a bunch of mid-30′s burn-outs, but hey, from Brisbane to London to Barcelona to Gothenburg to Las Vegas and Los Angeles, we were there, chasing those who chased their rock n’ roll dream.

The selection of tracks chosen appeared like one night stands that lingered a little longer than usual, almost all of them attached to a singular memory of the song being performed, either from a distance or elbows resting on the stage in mute admiration, or maybe just there emanating from a speaker aimed direct into our inner consciousness, refusing to budge. Tracks 20 to 11 are discussed here, and the countdown reaches its thrilling conclusion (envelope, please) below.

The song a reawakened Arcade Fire would open their 2010 shows, “Ready To Start” rolled into town like a dazzling carnival, drumming up intent (“Businessmen drink my blood/like the kids in art school said they would”) and setting the scene to follow. For a band only three albums into their career, it would be unkind to call The Suburbs their ‘comeback album’, but it dipped into a shared nostalgia of adolescence and ideals, succeeding in their goal where Neon Bible had failed. The Suburbs was an album to be proud of with far too many highlights to choose, so we went with one Arcade Fire chose too. (CS)

Fans’ poor reception and misunderstanding of MGMT’s new album lead a lot of people to simply ignore it altogether, which was a shame, because it boasted some gorgeous art rock. “Siberian Breaks” was the eleven minute middle of the record and nicely summed up the album’s penchant for musical journeying. From the melancholy acoustic open to the angular dreamy transitions and the mechanical spewing of the ending, MGMT’s weird ambitions shattered the indie pop ceiling of their debut. (JL)

One of the stand out tracks from The Morning Benders sophomore release Big Echo. “All Day, Day Light” crackled with electricity and smacked of effortless cool. As hand-claps slapped against the stab of guitar chords, vocalist Christopher Chu handed out alliteratively perfect lines like “someone somewhere sails the ocean/someone somewhere selling the seas”. The Morning Benders appeared out of nowhere with this near-perfect album, unburdened by pre-release hype and fanfare, hitting their marks as surely as a needle hits its groove. (CS)

Over fifteen years Les Savy Fav have been steadily forging a career based on angular art-rock ala The Fall/Pavement blended with post-hardcore topped with a pop sensibility. Root to Ruin showed age hadn’t mellowed their musical assault or dulled Tim Harrington’s acerbic tongue. Predominately a balls out mix of upbeat rock, covering sex, rebellion and, well more sex, Root to Ruin reaped the most rewards when the pace was slowed, painting the hip LA neighbourhood of Silverlake as a nightmarish place of vicious youths tied to mobile phones with tanned breasts and bleached teeth set over shimmering guitars and a bottom end as solid as Harrington’s own. (CR)

It was impossible to expect Deerhunter to topple 2008’s flawless Microcastle, but there were many moments in Halcyon Digest for fans to thrill to, and none as more perfectly crafted as guitarist Lockett Pundt’s contributions. His “Desire Lines”, strengthened the ‘pop core’ of Halcyon Digest with a meditation on age and disenchantment and a descending guitar line that gently pushed the song into 6 minutes plus of sighing serenity. (CS)

“Groove Me” was good enough to be another TV on the Radio song rather than a side project. The thumping bassline and stray hip-hop elements lent itself nicely to the new wave skeleton and disco guitars. It’s a huge plus whenever a well-constructed song is also infinitely catchy, and this had it in spades. Despite the Maximum Balloon album’s inconsistencies, when it was on, it was ON, and Sitek shined outside of his usual TVOTR role and provided some outstanding, funky diversions. (JL)

“1268” was undoubtedly one of the more aggressively danceable and musically intriguing debut singles released in 2010. North Wale’s We//Are//Animal blew in from outer nowhere (apologies to the Welsh), sounding like a feral Super Furry Animals. Little was known about them until “1268” arrived on our desk addressing the band as some kind of outdoor recording purists. What drives We//Are//Animal to make the music they do is still a mystery, but goddamn it‘s a good one. Their Blair With Project video in the Welsh countryside had us sold in seconds. Undoubtedly one of the highlights of the summer. (CS)

Whether their swansong or merely a bookend This Is Happening was LCD Soundsystem’s most realised vision to date. A fusion of vintage synths, complex percussion and ‘70s guitar riffs complemented with wry, bitter lyrics, which could only be written by a 40 year old who’d been through the music business, and life, blender and come out a little wiser and a little damaged. James Murphy knows damn well that after the party there is the inevitable comedown and after the sex the loneliness when you return home, alone. (CR)

The luminous disco swoon of Twin Sister‘s “All Around And Away We Go” would’ve found a perfect home in Studio 54, but instead had to make do as a regular staple on the Webcuts turntable. Pulled in by the part-breathy, part-kooky vocals of Andrea Estella, “All Around And Away We Go” glided in on a hypnotic rush that would’ve sounded incredible, coming up or coming down. The video clip for the song was just as off the wall, complete with a dance routine, a splash of psychedelia and some sweet stop-motion animation. Taken from the paired release of two EPs from earlier this year, we can‘t wait to hear a full album from them in 2011. (CS)

It’s almost embarrassing to admit that Wild Nothing’s debut album Gemini went largely unnoticed until months after it came out, and thus was never reviewed by Webcuts. Inexcusable and regrettable, but hey, shit happens. Word of mouth would drift from different corners of the globe and it became obvious that many people were beginning to take Jack Tatum’s music to heart. It wrestled with a kind of distant melancholia and of a pining for love, happiness, etc that always seemed never closer than an arms length away. “Live in Dreams” encapsulated such a mood perfectly and had two of the best opening lines of 2010 — “Sitting on the cigarette butt front porch/I could ask you “are you dead like me?“. Listening to Gemini was like standing in a roomful of diamonds, each track glistened and shone, the dreamiest of dream-pop gems. It seemed only fitting that it would sneak up on you and then refuse to leave. (CS)

Chosen by senior Webcuts contributors, Craig Smith (CS), Caleb Rudd (CR), and Jonathan Langer (JL).

Well known for using his blog as a means to give away his music (even to his own chagrin, accidentally leaking an unfinished version of Atlas Sound’s Logos album months in advance), Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox seems to have trumped all previous attempts of goodwill and creative insight by releasing not one, but three separate collections of demos/works-in-progress and other miscellania. Released under his own Atlas Sound moniker, Cox has partaken in some early thanksgiving by giving fans something he’s called Bedroom Databank Vol’s 1-3.

Having just completed a North American tour with Deerhunter (Webcuts encountering Cox in Amoeba shopping for tune before their dope-smoke heavy show at the Music Box in Los Angeles), Cox has found time to clear his hard drive of a stockpile of accumulated tracks, including covers of Dylan and Kurt Vile. Interestingly enough, there’s a track recorded at the Hoxton Hotel in London in July of this year. Those of you curious about what Bradford Cox gets up to in hotel rooms best check that track out. All volumes of Bedroom Databank can be found at http://deerhuntertheband.blogspot.com/

It was Spacemen 3 that coined the phrase “taking drugs to make music to take drugs to”, and given that everybody these days seems to be on something, Atlanta, GA’s Deerhunter, appear to have taken that statement to heart, albeit in a more functional, prescribed way. To completely understand the disassociated environment that Deerhunter’s music exists in, it would be interesting to find out what it is that sustains them. A musical pharmacopeia Halcyon Digest isn’t, but the fact that ‘Halcion’ is drug prescribed to treat anxiety and insomnia hasn’t gone entirely unnoticed either.

2008’s Microcastle staked its place as one of the great albums of the decade, one that effortlessly summed up what Deerhunter were — a collision of Pavement’s laconic lo-fi flutters and My Bloody Valentine’s expressways to your skull, all fed by Cox’s recurring themes of paranoia and persecution. Halcyon Digest is no different. But if you were to map the chronology of Microcastle to Halcyon Digest, it would be necessary to include Logos, the second album from Cox’s side project Atlas Sound as a direct influence and a necessary part of the puzzle.

As shimmering the exterior of opener “Earthquake” is, little disguises Cox seemingly sleeptalking through the song over a slo-mo looped rhythm. The lucid calm of the track is shaken with the warm fuzz of acoustic stomp “Don’t Cry” which itself falls asleep in a heap at the end via more of Cox’s sleep murmurs. Chosen as the lead single “Revival” is more reminiscent of the band’s previous Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP with its cascading chords and harmonies that draw you in. “Memory Boy”, along with guitarist Lockett Pundt’s “Desire Lines”, strengthen the ‘pop core’ of the album. It’s on these tracks (along with Pundt’s Mary Chain channelling “Fountain Stairs”) where the full band are engaged do the effect of Halcyon Digest truly kick in.

The amiable sing-song “Basement Scene” borrows from both the Everly Brothers and Cox’s own “Shelia” from Atlas Sound’s Logos. Its playful melody is hard to dislike but the track verges on throwaway and Cox’s recurring themes of waking up/getting old/doing drugs begin to feel redundant. It’s here and on the hallucinating haze of  “Helicopter” that Deerhunter’s world begins to collapse in on itself . Its list-less loop, the pitter-patter of keys and Cox’s whiney “Oh these drugs, they play on me these terrible ways/they don’t pay like they used to pay” give a sense of ground already covered, albeit eight miles high.

Conversely, on the epic Jay Reatard dedicated “He Would Have Laughed”, the lyrics aren’t so self-plagiarizing, and while the layers are added, so too the depths of Cox’s search for answers. “I get bored as I get older/can you help me figure this out?”. Having recorded a split-single with Jay Reatard for Sub Pop, Reatard’s untimely passing is cause for instrospection from the loss of another great musician from drug and alcohol abuse. Following in the steps of the mighty Microcastle was ultimately going to be a hard task. Despite a sense of deja-vu, Halcyon Digest is a still conscious step forward for Deerhunter.

“Take my hand and pray with me”, and how we’ve prayed, patiently awaiting the arrival of Deerhunter’s 4th album Halcyon Digest. For the dimly remembering, the monumental Microcastle was Webcuts album of the year for 2008, and expections have already been set. “Helicopter” is the second track to be previewed from the album and it’s a loop-based, plink-plonk synth-led Deerhunter meets The Littlest Mermaid undersea adventure with Bradford Cox revisiting his usual themes of isolation and escapism, and well you know the rest, drugs and paranoia. Unlike those ‘slacker’ bands out there like Wavves and Best Coast who talk about getting stoned and making music, Deerhunter is the real fuck-with-your-head deal. The collage of visuals for the clip (Deerhunter’s first ever video) is unsurprising for them, but there’s something about “Helicopter” that feels like it will have its greatest effect while being paranoid, trapped, and on drugs.

While a large portion of you out there are punching your computer screens and hating on Matador from being denied access to their Las Vegas 21st Birthday Party (i’ll be throwing a pity party somewhere in Los Angeles at the same time), our favourite Atlantan sons, Deerhunter have announced news of their fourth LP, Halcyon Digest to be released by 4AD on September 27 (28 in the US).

Frontman Bradford Cox describes “…always being fascinated with the ephemera of 70′s – 80′s artrock in record stores like Wuxtry in Athens where I hung out as a kid or Wax ‘N Facts in Atlanta. You’d see a photocopied faded B-52′s flyer next to a poster for Lou Reed or XTC. It was like an artpunk scrapbook on those walls. It made my head spin. Who are these people? Who are the fucking Residents with these weird-ass eyeball faces?”. Having spent a good several hours rifling around in Wax ‘N Facts over the years, Webcuts can only agree.

Cox has designed a flyer by hand in the cut-and-paste style of his new-wave heroes. Fans are asked to print the flyer out, photocopy it, and paste it around town – in their favorite independent record store, co-op, bedroom, library, etc… They are asked to take photos of the flyers where they hang them and send them to flyers@halcyondigest.com, where they will be posted. Fans are asked to include the city where the photo was taken in the email. People participating are asked to respect local laws regarding the posting of flyers, and to ask permission before posting them on private property.

Those who send in images will be the first to hear (via an e-mailed link) Halcyon Digest‘s first single in the next few weeks. They will also receive an exclusive non-album track that will not be available anywhere else.

Download the hi-res poster here and venture over to halycondigest.com to check out a couple of spooky looped samples…