Last weekend, Deerhunter figurehead Bradford Cox did something silly. Cox posted on a filesharing site a couple of new tracks from his Atlas Sound sideproject. Little did he know that such an action would 'expose' to the world the other directories he had sitting on the server. One of those dormant little volcanoes was a directory hosting mp3s of the - then - forthcoming Deerhunter record,
Microcastle. Hot "ambient punk" lava spilled forth, splashing all over the intertubes and hardening into magma with blog posts and links and torrents and the whole damn lot.
Circulating some two months ahead of its scheduled release (28 October), the record was effectively 'in the wild' and being voraciously consumed. The band - and label - decided that releasing the thing properly ASAP would be the best thing to do. So they did. Now you can score the record via iTunes. Rush releasing - all the
cool kids are
doing it.
Interestingly, Cox is urging patience. The seasonal turn is essential to the enjoyment of the record.
"When I make records by myself or with Deerhunter," he
blogged, "I enjoy taking into consideration lots of aspects about the whole release. I wanted
Microcastle to be a Fall/Winter record. That might sound stupid to some of you but it's the whole truth. I don't blame you for listening to it now that it's widely available, but its just another part of the project that was taken out of my hands by someone not associated with the band or label."
I'm not sure where that leaves us southern hemispherists. I suppose we get shitty that the album wasn't released four months earlier than its rushed release? That way we could get the full experience.
Stringent, season-abiding citizens still have their wonderful last record. To wit: