The Olivia Tremor Control- Explanation II: Experimental Themes and Dream Sequences[1996]

For me, The Olivia Tremor Control sit at the head of the Elephant 6 pantheon. I'm a huge fan of everything associated with the collective, but I feel that OTC was the first and best iteration of the core E6 crew. Bill Doss and Will Cullen Hart, the main creative producers for OTC, were flanked by, at various points, Peter Erchik, Scott Spillane. Jeff Mangum, Kevin Barnes, Eric Harris, John Fernandes, and just about everyone else associated with any E6 act.

1996's "Dusk at Cubist Castle" is a weird psych-pop album- very heavy on the psych, and certainly not lacking in the pop department. It contains a perfect pop song that doesn't pass the two-minute mark("Jumping Fences"), as well as a 10-track experimental and ambient suite("Green Typewriters"). The production is so saturated with dozens of instruments and vocal tracks that it comes closer to a warm, cozy room of sound, than a wall of sound.

"Explanation II" was a bonus disc released with the first 1000 or so copies of "Dusk at Cubist Castle", and is, presumably, a further illumination of the beautiful and abstract world hinted at in the loose conceptual threads of the album. In effect, it's a disc of ambient instrumentals, supposedly to be played alongside the album, Zaireeka style, to produce quadrophonic sound. The two don't match up in length, so that can't be true, but "Explanation II" is still an interesting sort of ambient; very atmospheric, but very light. I find this album highly relaxing, and for me, it's like going to that weird, paisley-and-dada world that the Olivias managed to conjure up on "Dusk at Cubist Castle".

For an OTC fanboy such as myself, you can sort of see the progression from the odd and moody, yet light and poppy style of "Dusk at Cubist Castle" to the much darker and introspective experimental tendencies of "Black Foliage". If "Dusk at Cubist Castle" took the listener on a tour of the Olivia's strange world, and "Black Foliage" was a deep journey through the more twisted aspects of that world, then "Explanation II" is that time between the two. It's the days where you get adjusted to this strange new place, before you find out what's really going on.