Home > Music > CD Review > Atlas Sound, 'Let the Blind Lead Those Who See But Cannot Feel'

Atlas Sound, 'Let the Blind Lead Those Who See But Cannot Feel'

Deerhunter frontman shows a new side on ambient side project

By Andy Hermann

Metromix
February 18, 2008

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Backstory: Atlas Sound is the brainchild of Bradford Cox, frontman for Atlanta art-rockers Deerhunter. He began recording spooky, ambient solo material under the name Atlas Sound as early as 1994, but didn’t begin work on the first Atlas full-length until 2007. He recorded most of "Let the Blind Lead Those" in hotel rooms during the last Deerhunter tour, using a four-track recorder and a laptop on loan from his label, Kranky.

Why you should care: Deerhunter is one of the most innovative bands to emerge in the past few years, and they owe much of their success to Cox, a live-wire singer and restless experimenter who clearly has enough creative juice for a side project or two.

Verdict: “Let the Blind Lead Those” is a deceptively simple album made up of spare, mostly electronic soundscapes and lyrics that have been stripped down to haiku-like chants. Cox sings like a narcoleptic nodding in and out of consciousness, drawing out every vowel and chomping down on every hard consonant like it takes all his strength to say. “Quarantined and kept,” he sings on “Quarantined,” “so far away from my friends.” Such images of isolation, combined with the album’s dense, claustrophobic loops of distorted synths, reverb-laden guitars and ambient noise, make you feel as though you’ve crawled inside Cox’s head. And so long as you’re up for a little creepiness (“A Ghost Story”) and melancholy (“Winter Vacation”), it’s not a bad place to be.

X-Factor: When it comes to influences, Cox can out-geek the most obsessive German techno fanatic—in a recent interview, he name-checked not only Kraftwerk, but also Wolfgang Voigt and Markus Guentner. Who? Exactly.