Customer Reviews

Major Organ & The Adding Machine

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What you must understand about this CD is that it wasn't made for you. The people who worked on this CD made a cd of found sound and tape loops and distortion and spoken word and they did it all for themselves.

Fortunately, we can actually enjoy some of this stuff. If you've never really heard sound collages before, this is as good a place to start as any. Sounds drift in and out and voices are heard and dissapear and the music creates environments that are sometimes fascinating to listen to.

Not all of the cd is this way, however. There are a fair number of songs, which for the most part are great. They recall the Beatles and the Beachboys with trims of distortion and psychedelic imagery, baroque piano, and rattley drums. It's an enjoyable CD, but more so if you've ever had experience with the Elephant 6 label.

First thing's first, if you are a diehard Elephant 6 fan or really dig the hyper-experimental Beatles deluges, snag this faster than you can say, "I'm sorry". If the two aformentioned oddities mean nothing to you, then by all means forego. The record, if listened to at surface level, is one of the most frightening things ever put to tape. Nothing connects, the artwork is incendiary in its nostalgic nuances, and the sound is freakishly akin to an alien digestion of earthly music and subsequent faulty regurgitation. Fans will notice voices of Robert Schneider (?), Kevin Barnes, and even Jeff Mangum. And if "Life Form" doesn't make you weep, you are not carbon-based. When probed, it sounds like they're having fun. And to do just that and still scare the bejeezus out of listeners is a novel and successful thing to do. This is perhaps the most Elephant 6 record. Word.

listen: if you're remotely interested in this album (i.e. you LOVE other elephant 6 related releases from neutral milk hotel, olivia tremor control, etc.) then just buy it right now without listening to the sound samples. sound samples can be evil.

this is an album made for fun by a group of recording enthusiasts (the elephant 6 orchestra) by passing a tape around amongst themselves. half the time the people involved had lost track of the tape and had no idea who had it. who knows how long it gestated, but the end result shows what must have been hours and hours over overdubbing and noise-making layered on top of what were once stunningly good pop tunes. this album is an ode to the joys of recording (it's also a quasi-concept album with a nearly indecipherable pseudo-story.) obviously it would have been more fun if WE were in on the making of it, but we should be thankful we get to hear it.

this is an album you'll listen to once, only to put away for a while in disgust. then later, you'll dig it out (out of sort of morbid curiosity) and find it a lot better than you remember. the cycle will repeat for a few years, each time some of the layers stripping away and melodies coming to the front.

it's an aural palate cleanser, the album that you've always wanted to listen to on those days when you just stare at your cd rack and aren't in the mood for ANYTHING you own.

think of it as two albums that play simultaneously, and one of them is awesome (the other is a sound effects album of objects falling and shattering). it's unlike anything else you own (including the music tapes, an elephant 6 band that major organ is often compared to, inaccurately). have fun digging!

This album is terrible. It's nothing but a collection incoherent noise collages. This isn't Neutral Milk Hotel! What is this garbage? This is unlistenable.

Okay, we get it. Lots of people hate this album. But for those who like a challenging, rewarding listening experience, Major Organ and the Adding Machine will make a great addition to your CD collection.

Yes, it's weird. Yes, there are very few real songs; most of the album is comprised of odd sound collages. So what? It's still a solid album. It's not the best thing ever made, but it's still worth owning.

Granted, with the first listen I was left in disappointment. But after a few more listens, I realized the greatness of many of the songs. "Un, Deux, Trois" still comes off as annoying, though.

Album highlights include the great "His Mister's Pet Whistles," "Madam Truffle," "Barry's Lung," "Transmission" and "Life Form."

The bottom line is this: If you aren't an Elephant 6 fanatic, don't buy it (although in that case, you probably wouldn't be contemplating purchasing it, anyway). If you can't stand the noisier parts of The Olivia Tremor Control's albums, don't buy it. But if you love E6 and its entities, and are willing to try a difficult, yet rewarding listen, buy it. It may not hit you at first, but you should grow to love it.

The Elephant 6 collective is made up of very strange people, who range from psychedelic pop to bizarre folk-rock to... well, try to think up a description for Neutral Milk Hotel. But every now and then, they create something that is so strange that drugs are probably required to fully get into it.

"Major Organ and the Adding Machine" is one of those. It's essentially a psychedelic jam band, full of weird effects, odd clattering noises and quasi-melodies. Every now and then a bizarre pop song emerges from the chaos, but most of the time it's just acid jams.

It opens with the strange "When Father Was Away On Business," a collection of odd noises and stuttering vocals. Things improve a little in "His Mister's Pet Whistles," which has a charming Of Montreal-like melody buried under all the noise and mayhem.

That about sets the tone for the entire album -- half of it is instrumental madness, half is promising pop. It starts off on a relatively normal note, about halfway through it gets crazier and crazier, pushing out the "normal" (nothing about Elephant 6 is normal) pop to the sidelines. It ends on a relatively ordinary note, with the stately keyboard of "Life Form (Transmission Received)," but by that time your brain is probably fried.

The more normal bits of pop, unsurprisingly, resemble the various Elephant 6 bands at different times -- actually, many of them resemble a lo-fi French twin of Olivia Tremor Control or Of Montreal. Their melodies are loaded with weird sound effects, but they tend to be catchy, a little funky, and entertainingly bizarre.

The madness part includes xylophone pop, interludes of electronic swipping and sound samples, the wound of wind blowing, an otherworldly bass solo, slightly mad dancepop, random piano, and mournful a capella. It climaxes with the minute-and-a-half "Waking In The Sun," which is a completely schizophrenic collection of mouth noises, explosive percussion, electronic screeches, and much more.

Obviously with a jam band, you can expect some randomness. With Major Organ and the Adding Machine, there are some good jams and good pop, but many of the songs evoke the question: Why? Why bother with a seemingly random collection of blips and intermittent instrumentals, which runs for only thirty seconds?

As a result, the jams never are really good -- at best they are entertainingly weird. However, they have the out-there quality of Elephant 6 psychedelica, with none of the fun melodies or amazing instrumentation. The pop numbers fare better, such as the explosively good "Water Dripping On Bread Makes Bread Taste Not So Tasty," which is both insane and dancey.

"Major Organ and the Adding Machine" has the quality of a mad musician's experiment, but that also means that some of the songs are virtually inaccessible. Stick to the pop numbers, which are masterful lo-fi psychedelica.

this album isnt for dorks that want "songs" with "choruses" and "verses", they wanted to make an album to goof around with and thought enough of it to put it out on cd...and there are really beautiful moments as well. so just remember (guy below me) they didnt make this album to appeal to everyone, they made it for themselves and hopefully you can enjoy it too.

One of the best psychedelic albums I have heard in a while. The Elephant 6 collective have truly done something amazing with this album.

don't buy this album! it is a tumorous growth on your appreciation of music! if you do get this on a whim, as i did, you'll listen to it, say something along the lines of "what happened here?" and shelf it. then one day without thinking about it you'll happen to look at it sitting there (digitally or physically) and decide (without really thinking about what you heard last time) to put it on, because you aren't in the mood for all the other stuff you listen to. then this record will click. you won't even get it this second time around, but it sure sounds better than it did before. slowly but surely the frequency at which you listen to this record will increase; you will want to hear more of the goodness you heard before. so be careful about you major organ fixes... there isn't much else to go around... but then again on the other hand if you are an avid e6er this is no brainer... get it.

as time passes, i find myself less interested in "normal" music. i am a fan of a lot of the elephant 6 bands, and major organ is definitely one of my favorites, along side neutral milk hotel and the music tapes, and the others are all good, but those three are really it for me. this record weaves noise with lo-fi pop, psych, whatever else and even an operatic tune "madame truffle" (this is the one song it is very clear that jeff mangum sings lead on...if that is what you're looking for, and if you are looking for another NMH record, this is NOT it...maybe in theory (as in group of friends getting together and giving their all to make it happen) if not in sound...but that's a whole other argument).
my favorite thing about major organ is the blend between noise, pop songs, and song fragments spread throughout....and it's all great. if you've ever felt the joy of creating noisey/improv/way off the beaten path sounds out of your indescibable love of and passion for music and making music with your friends...you really should check this out.
it is also another elephant 6 record that you can hear new things on with each listen. and music was and is meant to be LISTENED TO, not just playing in the background. so if you like to listen deep into music and are into noisey music that can lack stucture at times and focus more on a feel or feeling than a melody, with some truly great yet anything but normal songs, i can't recommend this enough...along with the music tapes CD...they are both criminally overlooked.
i wish there were more bands like this.

It must be nice to be part of the Elephant 6 collective. After several wonderful albums by various bands in the collective, they've attained such an indie credibility that they could release just about anything and people will buy it and make every attempt to justify why it is a masterpiece. "Major Organ and the Adding Machine" would seem to be an attempt to test this very theory.

What we have here is mostly a great example of what is wrong with the E6. At it's core, Major Organ is a noise collage compilation. For the life of me, I could never understand why several of the E6 bands have marred otherwise fine albums with these irritating tracks. Yet we have here most of an albums worth of noise.

The sad thing here is, in three or four tracks you'll hear what might have been an excellent song or instrumental that is instead marred by more clatter and distortion. Track 2 is a potentially great Of Montreal ground into a mess. Track 6, the album's highlight, finds Nuetral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Mangum once again take the lead in an almost excellent song marred by clattering and ringing throughout it's entirety.

If you're the type who skipped right to the Green Typewriter's tracks in 'Cubist Castle,' then by all means, don't hesitate to pick this up. For the rest of you, save your [money]. Just simulate the Major Organ sound by listening to The Music Tapes through a high-speed fan over the sound of your garbage disposal.