How do mgmt make their music

At the same time, the fact that few of the singles have really caught on may finally show they are today what they always wanted to be: post-mainstream. Dazed media sites. Music Opinion. Following the signing of contracts, the band were then given all of 21 days to create their major label full-length debut. For this, they procured the help of prolific rock producer Dave Fridmann Mercury Rev, The Flaming Lips, Tame Impala , who embraced their sugary psychedelic compositions wholeheartedly.

According to the MGMT members themselves, much of the creative success of Oracular Spectacular happened virtually by accident as a result of piecing together various disparate ideas , rather than following any semblance of a plan. The final result was a seamless fusion of retro art-rock and modern psychedelic electronica. Dave ended up running our tracks through this thing that crushed them and made them sound really gross again.

To hear it in the resulting interviews since Oracular Spectacular , the duo immediately bored themselves with the style that made them popular. Perhaps they should have chased their more experimental muse under a different moniker; the decision to keep at it under the MGMT banner came across as an obstinate effort to reclaim their brand back from the fans.

Their new songs are vital, compelling works, yet in concert MGMT still feel like an entity imprisoned by their past. Just a little over a decade into their existence, MGMT are already treated as a legacy act running their course to dutifully let us remember an earlier, simpler time in our lives. And we should be grateful! Reliving the past is one of the most enjoyable ways to spend the present. As an independent website, we rely on our measly advertising income to keep the lights on.

Our ads are not too obtrusive, promise. VanWyngarden has abandoned the hippy garb that made him an indie-disco heartthrob: when Oracular Spectacular took off, MGMT's gigs were marked by the unexpected arrival of screaming girls, not an eventuality that the Cleaners from Venus — best known for bequeathing the world the poet Martin Newell and the Times columnist Giles Smith — ever had to contend with. His paisley shirt is buttoned to the neck, his tight black jeans are tucked into his Doc Martens and what's happening on top of his head may yet lead to a global shortage of hairspray.

Goldwasser, meanwhile, can put forward a more coherent argument than you might expect as to why now is the right time to release an album heavily influenced by the likes of the Deep Freeze Mice. Their music was really beautiful, he says, but, as with so many things in the mids, it was haunted by the fear of nuclear war: it sounded paranoid, which means it fits with the current times.

But, coherent argument or not, you can well imagine their record company's delight at the news that MGMT were making an album under the sway of Dan Treacy, a lavishly gifted songwriter cursed with an unerring appetite for self-sabotage.

Treacy's career eventually went so wildly off the rails he spent most of the 90s missing, presumed dead, only to be discovered on a prison ship, a homeless heroin addict serving a sentence for shoplifting. Even Goldwasser, whose enthusiasm for Treacy's ouevre knows no bounds, seems a little startled that he is still alive.

Whatever else Treacy may be, he's hardly a major label's role model of choice for a multi-platinum electro-pop duo. They were happy that it was creatively …" He voice trails off and he tries again. At the same time, I think they were a little perplexed as to how to market it. Indeed, the record label's attempts to market Congratulations to the kind of audience that bought Kids and Time to Pretend only made the situation worse.

In an effort to build some pre-release excitement, they set up an in-the-studio interview with a thumpingly mainstream rock magazine. Alas, in much the same way that during their early encounters with the British press the pair "played up the stoner asshole persona", Goldwasser and VanWyngarden used it as an opportunity to make rather a meal of Congratulations' alleged uncommerciality, something you get the distinct impression they quite enjoy doing.