[VIDEO] Deerhunter Releases 13-min Non-Album Track/Opus, “Timebends”

Altanta‘s Deerhunter was formed back in 2001, but really started to gain some of their biggest hype around 2007 and 2008, with the release of such efforts as their Cryptograms, Microcastle, and Weird Era Cont. albums followed by the Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP.  After that, they went on a brief hiatus, returning with the critically acclaimed Halcyon Digest in 2010.  The interest was still there, but it began to feel like the era over-saturated by indie bands like themselves, along with Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear, was already dying down.  Again, it’s not that their time was over, but there was a shift.  It’s interesting how the world works.  The bands that begin to make names for themselves so often do so by being unique and pushing against whatever current sounds dominating the airwaves, only to be lumped together with each other presented as a movement of sorts.  From “grunge” to “post-rock” we’ve seen this shit a million times.  It’s the formula.  The one’s that aren’t there for a scene and can survive being washed away by whatever categories they may be thrust into, voluntarily or otherwise, after the explosion, may have the ability to come out the other end with a new freedom to create from a new perspective and without that early pressure to establish a name for themselves, anymore.  This is where Deerhunter seems to have found themselves.  No real expectations.  Nothing to prove. They’re just making music.

It may have something to do with the fact that I’ve been raising a kid for the last 8 years and am simply out of touch, but it feels as if we’re operating in a different world, now.  Things come and go and the climate shifts.  Deehunter‘s Bradford Cox and his bandmates have worked on their own solo projects and even efforts outside of music, experimenting in different ways and reuniting when the time calls for it to see how they sound now in whatever form they are now.  Back in January, the group released their 8th album, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Dissappeared?  Co-produced by Cate Lebon, the latest LP eschews that sprawling, foggy poppy psychedelia of their early releases for something more direct and stripped down.   But if Deerhunter is anything, they are a band with layers, and today’s release of a brand new 13-minute track titled, “Timebends” proves that they definitely still have that experimental goodness within them.  That’s not to say that their more straight-ahead songwriting as of late isn’t experimental in its own right, but sometimes you’ve got to get weird with it.

The press release for “Timebends” refers to the standalone non-album “opus” as a “partly improvised stream-of-consciousness outpouring. Recorded live direct to tape and in one take with minimal overdubs and mastered using a completely analogue signal chain.  This thing builds and evolves diverting into various passageways from pastoral psych to avant-garde percussive onslaughts, gentle piano, discordant noise, and soaring guitar.  In other words, it’s the sort of thing that gets my attention.

Check it out below followed by a list of European tour dates

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5WpcvWxw0I

UPCOMING Deehunter European dates