Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (180 Gram Vinyl, Reissue)
Reissue, an absolute must-have for anyone who's spent time in Athens, Ga., and/or into Elephant 6.
Neutral Milk Hotel originated in Ruston, Louisiana, in the late 1980s, as one of the many home-recording projects of musician Jeff Mangum.[3] The simple home recordings Mangum made with his friends Robert Schneider, Bill Doss, and Will Cullen Hart led to the formation of the Elephant 6 musical collective.[4] After graduating from high school, Mangum released the single "Everything Is" on Cher Doll Records under the alias Neutral Milk Hotel.[5] The single's exposure convinced Mangum to record more music under this name.[6] He moved to Denver and worked with Schneider to record the 1996 album On Avery Island.[7] Although Schneider was interested in an expansive Beatlesque production, he aligned with Mangum's preference for a low-quality sound called lo-fi, admitting that "at first it was frustrating, but I came to enjoy it. That's how I learned to produce, doing that record, because I totally had to let go of what I thought it should be like."[8]
After the release of On Avery Island, Mangum recruited three musicians to tour with: Julian Koster, Jeremy Barnes, and Scott Spillane.[9] The North American tour in support of On Avery Island generated enough money to enable the quartet to move to Athens, Georgia, where a large group of Elephant 6 musicians were living.[10] By the spring of 1997, Mangum had written and demoed nearly every song for In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. He shared the demos with his bandmates before they moved to Denver to record the album.[11]