The Music Tapes - The Dark Is Singing Songs

The Music Tapes - The Dark Is Singing Songs (Sleepy Time Down South)

Listen to the first track “The Dark Is Singing Songs (Sleepy Time Down South)” from the forthcoming third full-length "Mary’s Voice" by The Music Tapes, due out on September 4th via Merge Records. The Music Tapes is an experimental pop music project of Elephant 6 member Julian Koster also known as a key member of Neutral Milk Hotel, a contributor to The Olivia Tremor Control, and the earlier Chocolate U.S.A.. Pre-order, HERE. 


"Mary's Voice," the follow up to 2008's acclaimed "Music Tapes for Clouds and Tornadoes," is part one of a planned two-part album and inaugurates a newly active phase in The Music Tapes' evolution-with plans to tour the world in a circus tent later this year and an NPR radio serial in the works. It was recorded with The Music Tapes' signature method of using recording machines of both past (early 1900s, '30s, '40s, '60s) and present to achieve a timeless sound. In Koster's own words: "I love sentimental melodies that you can hum with feeling. People warn against sentimentalizing or mythologizing the past. It's any failure to mythologize the present that I think we have to be afraid of. This is a miracle. You are a miracle. Our lives are magic, and our times all the more so. Music proves it." --Merge Records