About Jeff Mangum: Jeff Mangum is an American musician best known for being the lyricist, vocalist and guitarist of the band Neutral Milk Hotel, as well as being one of the cofounders of The Elephant 6 Recording Company.
I have a very limited knowledge of recording, but the miracle of being able to capture sounds on magnetic tape and the miracle of electricity, and these little magnetic particles, is amazing to me.
There is a whole aspect of freedom to recording at home that you don't get in a studio. The possibilities are infinite, and there is no reason not to explore them.
I bring a record home, and it connects with me like nothing else. In my ideal situation, somebody will do that with my record.
I would go to bed every night and have dreams about having a time machine and somehow I'd have the ability to move through time and space freely, and save Anne Frank.
I spend a lot of time practicing active imagination before I go to sleep. What I'm feeling will manifest as images through active imagination. And then I go to sleep, and those play out even more in my dreams.
I'm very influenced by the circus. A lot of the dreams that I have, I'm in the circus.
I love the idea of a record containing an entire universe; where the sounds span decades of recording from all over the world and all sorts of different sources.
I made a record of montage sounds in '99 under the name Korena Pang, but it was never put out because it didn't do it for me.
Usually, I create tunes that are fragmented. I think the biggest obstacle for people with their creativity is that they feel they have to sit down and create this finished, polished product.
The songs sort of come out spontaneously and it'll take me awhile to figure out what exactly is happening lyrically, what kind of story I'm telling. Then I start building little bridges - word bridges - to make everything go from one point to the nex...
I decided at 10 I wanted to be in a band; everyone else wanted to play football.
I went to Louisiana Tech, which is just down the road from where we lived. It was an easy college to get into.
My songs pretty much revolve in my brain most of the time - usually, whatever's coming next.
