7. The Olivia Tremor Control: The Opera House
Not exactly a band so much as an amalgamation of musicians who worked under a collective umbrella known as Elephant 6, and encompassing such lo-fi bands as Apples in Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Secret Square, Olivia Tremor Control was led by Will Cullen Hart and Bill Doss, multi-instrumentalists and songwriters from Ruston, LA. Olivia Tremor Control operates under the interesting conceit that all of its recordings figure into an epic plot of an imaginary film that exists only in the heads of Hart and Doss. Their music took Beatesque whimsy and songcraft, and grafted it to swirling psychedelic atmospherics and tape loops. "The Opera House" leads off their 1996 full-length debut Music from the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle, which resembles a lo-fi White Album. The first few thousand copies of this album came with a bonus CD of ambient "dream sequences" called Explanation II which, if played simultaneously with the first disc, produces a full quadrophonic sound. Olivia Tremor Control ceased operations in 2000 after 3 albums and several EP's.
8. Beck: Loser
One of the great left-field, out-of-nowhere masterpieces of the 1990's, Beck struck paydirt with "Loser", and the album that featured it, Mellow Gold, in 1994. Beck is as eclectic as they come; on the album he mixes rock, hip-hop, folk, psychedelia, and country as if they were meant to go together. Remarkably, in his hands, they somehow do. Recorded at home on a 4-track, with Beck laboriously overdubbing the instruments himself, this was the album that introduced to the world at large the concept of a music geek holed up in a room of his house, creating challenging, exciting music. Such oddball loners make up a large proportion of the lo-fi scene. "Loser" is a great stoner rap, a prime example of lo-fi, and a hit, reaching #10 on the Billboard chart.
9. Magnetic Fields: 100,000 Fireflies
Magnetic Fields is lead by Stephin Merritt, another home-recording multi-instrumentalist/songwriter with a fondness for early electronica sounds, mixed with Brian Wilson whimsey and Phil Spector wall-of-sound, lo-fi style. "100,000 Fireflies", from their 1991 sophomore effort, The Wayward Bus, opens with a jingly Spector-esque instrumentation and the warm allure of Susan Anway's 60's sunshine-pop influenced vocals, the tinkling of toy pianos accompanying her. The lyrics are startling in their stark sadness and dispair, with some bi-polar twists, and the instrumentation takes on a minor-key elegiac wistfulness. Superchunk had a popular cover of this song, which introduced many to Magnetic Fields. The band is still active; their most recent release, titled simply i, came out in 2004.
Article comments
1 - Pete Blackwell
I think the Mountain Goats really take the crown here, recording on a boom box. If I recall, there was even a duet over the phone.
More home recording stalwarts: The first several Smog albums and East River Pipe.
2 - SFC SKI
I good overview. I can't stand about 95% of lo-fi, but there are a few good ones amidst all the crap.