MGMT is: Andrew Vanwyngarden and Ben Goldwasser, two psychic pilgrims whose paths first intersected in the green pastures of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, circa 2002. "We weren't trying to start a band," Ben remembers. "We were just hanging out, showing each other music that we liked."
The pair was drawn to the music of other duos and found themselves incorporating the implications of the hallucinatory power-twee of the Incredible String Band, the roaring subway minimalist electronica of Suicide, the silky pop-soul of Hall & Oates, the pulsing narcotic trance of Spacemen 3, the avant-garde industrial romanticism of Royal Trux and much more into the constantly evolving sounds of MGMT.
As on-campus performance art provocateurs, Andrew and Ben began staging a series of "these obnoxious, noisy live electronic shows -- we never planned on having it be a recorded project -- where we would write these weird techno loops and arrangements that we could play with live. Most of it was running live off the computer and we had a turntable plugged into some guitar pedals, a radio, and a tape player. It was all electronically generated at that point. We would write a new song for each show and our shows would be 15 minutes long."
Following the release of the EP and a couple of one-month long tours, MGMT took six months off, with Andrew moving to Brooklyn for a post-college "existential crisis" and Ben hanging out in Connecticut before heading to upstate New York to work woodland construction.
Following their hiatus from MGMT, Ben and Andrew reconnoitered in Brooklyn and began recording new songs for the sheer fun of it on an "Mbox computer set-up." Those humble home sessions -- at once Apollonian and Dionysian -- lay the groundwork for what would become Oracular Spectacular.
Oracular Spectacular opens with "Time To Pretend" ("fanciful but with an undercurrent of impending doom") and closes with "Future Reflections" ("premonitions of a post-apocalyptic future where colonies of young people live on the beach and lead savage yet refined primitive lifestyles and go surfing"). In between lie the refractions of the "current chaotic vibrations of the world" on an album which distills the essence of the past, promises and portends the future, and offers an absorbing transformative experience between the molecules in the pulsations of the present. Not to mention an authentic "4th Dimensional Transition."
MGMT invites you to open your mind to the multi-dimensional vibrating Technicolor sounds of Oracular Spectacular.
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MGMT debut album 'Oracular Spectacular' out March 10th
MGMT release debut single 'Time To Pretend' Mar 3rd