Everything about Jeff Mangum totally explained
Jeff Mangum (born
August 10,
1970) is the founder and driving force behind the band
Neutral Milk Hotel and one of the cofounders of
The Elephant 6 Recording Company.
Robert Schneider (of
The Apples in Stereo),
Will Cullen Hart,
Bill Doss (formerly of
The Olivia Tremor Control and now comprising
Circulatory System and
The Sunshine Fix, respectively) and Mangum all attended
Ruston High School in the late
1980s. The friends shared a passion for bands of the 1960s such as
The Zombies, as well as an affinity for newer, noisier bands such as
Sonic Youth and
The Minutemen. They reflected these influences in the tapes they recorded and shared with each other, forming the seeds of what would become the Elephant Six Collective.
With Neutral Milk Hotel
From the ashes of a band called
Synthetic Flying Machine,
Neutral Milk Hotel was born, with an original line-up of Will and Bill on guitar and bass and Jeff on drums. Around 1995 Jeff decided to leave
Synthetic Flying Machine to focus on his own songs. A year of intensive songwriting (some of it accomplished, according to Jeff, while he was living in a haunted closet) in
Denver, Colorado with Robert Schneider at his
Pet Sounds Studio resulted in his debut album,
On Avery Island, released in 1996, which was mostly Rob and Jeff playing Jeff's songs with a few helpful friends. Jeff eventually expanded the line up of Neutral Milk Hotel and in 1998 released what many consider the band's (and indeed, the Elephant Six Collective's) defining album,
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
After Neutral Milk Hotel
The relative success of the album in addition to the pressures of being suddenly thrust into the spotlight took its toll on Mangum, who disbanded
Neutral Milk Hotel in 1998 after a tour in support of their latest album. Mangum has kept out of the public eye since then (although not without fans speculating on his whereabouts), rarely if ever playing acoustic sets and concentrating more on his recorded sound and music collages.
In March of 2001, Mangum and
Julian Koster (also formerly of
Neutral Milk Hotel) released an album under the name
Major Organ and the Adding Machine. Other involved players were
Kevin Barnes from the band
Of Montreal,
Eric Harris and
Will Cullen Hart of
Olivia Tremor Control, and
Elf Power's
Andrew Rieger.
On
February 4,
2001, Mangum and friends
Laura Carter and
Chris Knox played a gig—Mangum's first in two years—at the King's Arms in
Auckland, New Zealand. Mangum reported during the show to have suffered a nervous breakdown, but also said that it was a wonderful thing to have happened to him, clearly indicating a turning point in his life, and perhaps his musical career. The band was billed as 'World of Wild Beards Incorporated', a throwaway pseudonym which Mangum varied to 'Walking Wall of Beards Incorporated', a supposedly fictional company in the early 1900s that marketed a sound device pleasing to beard and pubic hair causing it to "form walls and walk around", whilst addressing the audience between songs.
In the summer of 2001, he released a compilation of field recordings of
Bulgarian
folk music called followed by a live album on the Orange Twin label,
Live at Jittery Joe's. The set was recorded by filmmaker
Lance Bangs in 1997 and was put out to combat the exorbitant sums that Neutral Milk Hotel live albums were selling for on
eBay. The CD features a
QuickTime movie of the concert performance, but Mangum is backlit and seen mostly in silhouette throughout the video. In 2005,
Live at Jittery Joe's was released on LP by Isota Records.
Four years later, on
August 2,
2005, Mangum joined
The Olivia Tremor Control onstage at New York's
Bowery Ballroom to sing vocals on their songs "I Have Been Floated" and "Shaving Spiders." Accounts say that he was softly
weeping before later being pulled to the floor by
Julian Koster and being
dogpiled by the rest of the band. Again, on November 17 of the same year, he joined another former Elephant Six band,
Elf Power, onstage at New York's
Knitting Factory for the final chorus of only one song, "The Arrow Flies Close," leaving the stage immediately afterwards. In addition to these appearances he's also toured with
Circulatory System as a drummer; he's been spotted at a handful of E6-related concerts in New York City, either in the audience or to sing backup vocals as he did with
The Instruments on July 21, 2006 at Lower East Side's intimate venue
Cake Shop.
Mangum appeared nine times on New Jersey's WFMU to play tape loops and other recordings in the fall of 2002.
On
June 26,
2006, a post was made on
Elephant 6's forum, "E6 Townhall", with the title of "news and fish and meaningful messages." The post suggested Mangum would make a return into the musical spotlight sometime within the year with a new release. Though the post caused some excitement (such as making the frontpage of
Pitchfork), an email from Mangum himself denied writing the message.
On
September 19,
2006 it was announced that Mangum would contribute to
The Apples in Stereo's new album
New Magnetic Wonder. Mangum is reported to be playing "drums, cow object, backing vocals, handclaps".
He is married to
Astra Taylor, best known for making the
documentary film Žižek! about the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst
Slavoj Žižek.
Discography
With The Olivia Tremor Control
With Major Organ and the Adding Machine
Major Organ and the Adding Machine (Orange Twin; 2001)
With Neutral Milk Hotel
See Neutral Milk Hotel discography.
As Jeff Mangum
(Orange Twin; CD; 2001)
Live at Jittery Joe's (Orange Twin; CD; 2001)Further Information
Get more info on 'Jeff Mangum'.
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