[douglasdickel]

A minha bíblia, o All Music Guide, também fez listas de melhores do ano, sob a alcunha de guia de presentes, devidamente dividido em categorias.

***

Oh não, agora minha compulsão foi pesquisar (esta era a pior coisa que poderia ter acontecido neste momento, sério) o coletivo Elephant 6...

The Apples In Stereo
Beulah
Black Swan Network
Chocolate USA
Circulatory System
Dixie Blood Mustache
Dressy Bessy
Elf Power
Essex Green
Frosted Ambassador
The Gerbils
High Water Marks
Major Organ And The Adding Machine
Jeff Mangum (coming soon)
Marbles
Minders
The Music Tapes
Neutral Milk Hotel
Olivia Tremor Control
Orchestre Fantastique
Pipes You See, Pipes You Don't
Secret Square
Sunshine Fix
Ulysses
Von Hemmling


The Extended Family

Bablicon
Fablefactory
Great Lakes
A Hawk And A Hacksaw (coming soon)
The Instruments (coming soon)
Ladybug Transistor
Late B.P. Helium
Marshmallow Coast
Marta Tennae
Midget and Hairs
My First Keyboard
Of Montreal
Thimble Circus
Visitations


Black Swan Network

"Genres: Experimental Rock, Instrumental Rock, Post-Rock/ Experimental, Experimental Ambient. Moods: Hypnotic. (...) A small note in the booklet of the Olivia Tremor Control's Dusk at Cubist Castle invited listeners to send tape recordings of themselves describing their dreams, real or imaginary, to the band's post office box in Athens, GA. Many did, and those tapes are the basis of the Black Swan Network."

Chocolate U.S.A.

"Smoke Machine is the second and final album from Chocolate USA, a kind of satellite, proto-Elephant 6 band (...), it springs out of childhood experiences."

Essex Green

"The Essex Green's debut album captures the sound and spirit of the psychedelic era with an uncanny accuracy which makes the rest of the Elephant 6 collective seem positively postmodern by comparison. Everything Is Green (...) evokes not merely the sonic grandeur of pop's past but its limitless possibilities as well."

The Gerbils

"At this point in time, listener tolerance for yet another record from the Elephant 6 sphere is going to depend almost completely on the individual's appetite for the fuzzy, noisy pop aesthetic which connects the label's multiplying releases together - if you already like Neutral Milk Hotel or the Olivia Tremor Control, then Are You Sleepy? is most definitely for you."

Marbles

"Not a band per se, the Marbles were essentiallly the alias of singer/songwriter Robert Schneider, better known as the frontman of the frontman of the Apples (in stereo). A four-track solo project, the Marbles began in March 1992 in the Denver, Colorado apartment Schneider shared with fellow Ruston, Louisiana native and future Olivia Tremor Control founder W. Cullen Hart; primarily a solo project, its sunny pop reflected Schneider's ongoing love of the Beach Boys, incorporating Casios and toy musical instruments into his gentle, guitar-based songs. Upon the Apples' formation in 1993, the Marbles effectively ceased to exist; a posthumous compilation of material entitled Pyramid Landing and Other Favorites appeared in 1997."

Olivia Tremor Control

"Not the Beatles, but an incredible facsimile: on their sprawling 27-song debut opus, Music From the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle, the Olivia Tremor Control manage to summon not only the sound of the White Album-era Fab Four, but also the unfettered creativity. The soundtrack to an unmade film about a pair of women named Olivia and Jacqueline and a massive earthquake dubbed the California Demise, the album incorporates a slew of influences and textures (including Beach Boys-flavored pop, psychedelia, Krautrock, noise, and folk-rock) and synthesizes them into a distinct homebrew of shimmering harmonies, guitar drones, backward tape loops, and inventive effects. As an added bonus, the first few thousand copies came with a bonus CD of ambient "dream sequences" - titled Explanation II - which, when played simultaneously with the first disc, realizes true quadraphonic sound. Amazing."

Ulysses

".010 was recorded live around one microphone in Schneider[Apples In Stereo]'s garage with some vocal and synth overdubs added later. The result is predictably lo-fi and raw, with the sound built around buzzing analog synths and Schneider's clanging rhythm guitar. (...) Elephant 6 fans might not know quite what to make of a record that is so simple and honest; hopefully, they will give it a chance because it is as strong musically as anything the Apples in Stereo have done and 100 times as powerful emotionally."

Ladybug Transistor

"With The Albemarle Sound, Ladybug Transistor finally achieves the pop grandeur their earlier records promised - from its lush arrangements and rich melodies right down to the perfectly retro cover art, the 1999 copyright date is the only telltale clue that the album wasn't actually released three decades earlier instead. As opposed to the like-minded bands of the Elephant 6 collective, whose similar nods in the direction of late-'60s popcraft butt heads with their concurrent desire to pursue more experimental paths, the Ladybugs aspire to exactly replicate the orchestral confections of obvious inspirations like Brian Wilson and Burt Bacharach (...)."