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On The List: Deerhunter

Deerhunter's latest album, Cryptograms, gradually builds from droney and experimental to a blissful psych-pop crescendo. Bradford Cox shares his thoughts on a number of songs—including those he had his first hallucinogenic experiences to.

Teenage Hallucinogenic Experiences and Other Thoughts

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Tracks

1. Magazine - The Light Pours Out Of Me

I think this song is very compact, well-organized, and effective. It's like an exercise in seeing how long you can jerk off without blowing your load.

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2. Nico - One More Chance

Amazing riff and vocal presence wrapped in demento guitar leads.

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3. Robert Wyatt - Born Again Cretin

Leftist political statement (RE: Mandela) delivered in layers of amazing vocal harmonies. Really moving and inventive.

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4. Cluster - Caramel

Something the whole band can agree on in the van. Which is rare.

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5. Bernard Herrmann - Solar Diamonds

From the soundtrack he did for The Day the Earth Stood Still. One minute of distant-sounding electronic tone music.

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6. Beat Happening - Our Secret

I always space out when I hear this. Borrowed nostalgia.

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7. Autechre - Cap.IV

Teenage hallucinogenic experience #1. Summer. Lockett has root canal, we take mushrooms and go to see a play our friend is acting in. Imagine panthers are fucking in my bedroom. I cannot pay attention to the play. I hear this later, while coming down. It fucks my mind. You kind of had to be there.

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8. Cocteau Twins - Cherry Coloured Funk

This is what I wish more remixes were: Beatless washes of loops based on a single vocal phrase and guitar completely asphyxiated with delay and reverb.

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9. Hugh Le Caine - Paulution (Charnel Number Five)

Teenage hallucinogenic experience #2. Lockett and I take mushrooms on a Saturday night and decide to drive west to find a "church" to go to the next morning. We drive through rural farmlands towards Alabama, listening to the weakening signal of local college freeform station 91.1 WREK. This weird, abrasive and atonal drone starts weaving in and out of the static. It fucks my mind. I later research this guy, who was, along with Raymond Scott, one of the pioneers of early electronic music instruments.

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10. Kraftwerk - Tanzmusik

Hypnotic song that uses a certain timbre of sounds that I'm really fond of. I love glockenspiels and music boxes and bells and those kind of chromatic percussion sounds. I love how organic this song sounds.

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