pinkbrassmonkey
02-14-2008, 03:26 AM
Alright, so the Elephant Six Recording Company was started by a bunch of kids from Ruston, Louisiana. Some kids who were friends, and were all in different bands in middle school started recording music on cassettes, sending them back and forth with hand-colored labels and a little crest that marked them as "E6". These friends were Will Cullen Hart, Robert Schneider, Bill Doss, and Jeff Mangum. If you don't know Elephant Six, you probably don't know them. Thats why I'm taking the time to write this and acknowledge them. The four of them got a job in a local radio station and found its collection of old and new music. The four of them grew up and built around them a large collection of both music and ideas, ranging from Sonic Youth's home recording ideals to a fascination with The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson's unfinished odyssey SMILE. The bands that grew from the old records they found were the solo project of Robert Schneider, The Apples In Stereo, the group project of Synthetic Flying Machine(to become The Olivia Tremor Control) with the other three, though Mangum left soon after they changed their name to start his own solo recording project, and third founding band, Neutral Milk Hotel.
Schneider created an official label called Elephant Six, moved to Denver and created Pet Sounds studio there. The first release under the label was an EP by The Apples. Soon after, the Olivia Tremor Control released "California Demise" from Athens, Georgia, under the E6 label(with Mangum still a part of the band). From there, the label grew and took in bands interested in what they had started. Bands such as Kevin Barnes' Of Montreal joined, as well as Elf Power, and bands began from other bands already inside the circle, such as the Gerbils, started by a member of Neutral Milk Hotel. What really stands out when it comes to Elephant Six, though, is that nothing felt strangled or trapped about it. It was just an umbrella term for the type of music the founders of Elephant Six had spawned, and when I started listening, for the first time in my life it felt like there was a revolution of music happening right now. The Recording Company has been shut down since 2002, but the E6 term still lingers, and many of its bands are still releasing music, living as it seems they always have, some playing in cafes and others in out of the way pubs, perhaps setting the stage for some new revolution.
Schneider created an official label called Elephant Six, moved to Denver and created Pet Sounds studio there. The first release under the label was an EP by The Apples. Soon after, the Olivia Tremor Control released "California Demise" from Athens, Georgia, under the E6 label(with Mangum still a part of the band). From there, the label grew and took in bands interested in what they had started. Bands such as Kevin Barnes' Of Montreal joined, as well as Elf Power, and bands began from other bands already inside the circle, such as the Gerbils, started by a member of Neutral Milk Hotel. What really stands out when it comes to Elephant Six, though, is that nothing felt strangled or trapped about it. It was just an umbrella term for the type of music the founders of Elephant Six had spawned, and when I started listening, for the first time in my life it felt like there was a revolution of music happening right now. The Recording Company has been shut down since 2002, but the E6 term still lingers, and many of its bands are still releasing music, living as it seems they always have, some playing in cafes and others in out of the way pubs, perhaps setting the stage for some new revolution.
