OLIVIA TREMOR CONTROL / BLACK SWAN DREAM TAPE vinyl lp

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 THE OLIVIA TREMOR CONTROL / THE BLACK SWAN NETWORK - DREAMTAPE

Vinyl lp and jacket are in excellent condition.  This lp was released on FLYDADDY RECORDS.  There is no # given to the release.  I purchased this lp when I went to see an Elephant 6 festival at the 40 watt in Athens GA sometime in the mid 1990's.  A great and hard to find release by the sorely missed Olivia Tremor Control.

A small note in the booklet of the Olivia Tremor Control's Dusk at Cubist Castle invited listeners to send tape recordings of themselves describing their dreams, real or imaginary, to the band's post office box in Athens, GA. Many did, and those tapes are the basis of the Black Swan Network.

The Black Swan Network are the Olivia Tremor Control under an assumed name (a conceit the prolific neo-psychedelicists are extremely fond of). William Cullen Hart, Bill Doss, John Fernandes, and Pete Erchick first debuted their musique concrète alter egos on the EP The Olivia Tremor Control Vs. the Black Swan Network in early 1997. This seven-track EP, an outgrowth of the ambient experiments on the bonus disc included with early copies of Dusk at Cubist Castle, recast fragments of tunes from that album into trippy new sound sculptures accented with all kinds of found sounds and tape manipulations. In August of that year, the Australian psych label Camera Obscura released The Late Music (Volume One), a full-length Black Swan Network CD with seven lengthy untitled pieces combining the heavily-processed dream description tapes with various instruments and noises to create a type of instrumental mood music too unsettled to be called ambient.

As the Olivia Tremor Control moved on to albums like Black Foliage: Animation Music and a new series of side projects and solo recordings, their interest in the Black Swan Network waned, and no new releases were forthcoming.(allmusic.com)

As much a concept as a band, the Olivia Tremor Control was one of the most visible and innovative members of the Elephant 6 collective, a coterie of like-minded, lo-fi indie groups -- including the Apples in Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Secret Square -- who shared musicians, ideas, and sensibilities. The Olivia Tremor Control was led by singers/songwriters/multi-instrumentalists Will Cullen Hart and Bill Doss, natives of the small, isolated town of Ruston, LA, where they struck up friendships with fellow outsiders Robert Schneider (who went on to front the Apples) and Jeff Mangum (the auteur behind Neutral Milk Hotel).

Throughout high school, the aspiring musicians -- all influenced by the likes of the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Zombies, Pink Floyd, and Sonic Youth -- exchanged home recordings and played in each other's bands. Hart and Doss later attended Louisiana Tech University together, where they tenured as college radio DJs and furthered their musical educations and ambitions. In 1990, Hart, Doss, and Mangum moved to Athens, GA, to form the group Cranberry Life Cycle; when Mangum exited, they enlisted John Fernandes and became Synthetic Flying Machine. After Doss' temporary defection to Chocolate USA, Synthetic Flying Machine mutated into the Olivia Tremor Control at much the same time both Schneider and Mangum relocated to Denver, CO, to start their own respective projects.

In 1995, the OTC (later fleshed out by "technical advisor" Eric Harris) debuted with the EP California Demise, the first chapter in an ongoing series of high-concept recordings built around the surreal plot of an imaginary film conceived by Hart and Doss. The follow-up 7", "The Giant Day," led directly into the group's 1996 debut double-LP, Music From the Unrealized Film Script "Dusk at Cubist Castle," a sprawling collection of Beatlesque psychedelia, popcraft, and tape loops culled from some 200 unrecorded songs. (The first few thousand copies of the album also included a bonus disc of ambient "dream sequences.") Keyboardist Pete Erchick officially joined prior to 1999's Black Foliage: Animation Music by the Olivia Tremor Control, another epic work that consolidated the group's underground popularity and widened the Elephant 6 cult. However, breakup rumors swirled around the group during 2000, and it was confirmed that the OTC had gone on at least a temporary hiatus toward the end of the year. In the meantime, the group's earliest recordings -- including California Demise and "The Giant Day" -- were reissued on CD as Singles and Beyond. Bill Doss remained active, releasing an EP titled Future History of a Sunrise Fix with his new project, the Sunshine Fix.

Please have a look at my other auctions...I am digging pretty deep into my collection

Vinyl in excellent condition. I used to record my records onto cassettes, so the vinyl has only been played a handful of times. Cover has been protected in a plastic sleeve, stored on my record shelf.

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Please have a look at my other auctions. I am thinning out my record collection, and I'm getting rid of a lot of rare stuff (to make room for new records...sigh).

Thanks, and good luck.