A few years after In the Aeroplane over the Sea was released, just as the first few packages of poetry and panties were being mailed to his home, NMH’s Jeff Mangum took a summer trip to Bulgaria to attend the Koprivshtitsa Festival, a gathering of thousands of Bulgarian artists and amateur musicians making a racket all over town for three days straight. Mangum brought along a tape recorder and gave the festival some Alan Lomax-style love, capturing bits of folk songs, instrumental drones, jingling dancers’ bells, crowd noise, and other incidental sounds, which he then edited together into a sprawling, ecstatic half-hour collage, released on CD as Orange Twin Field Works Vol. 1 in 2001. The CD sold moderately well and got a number of Neutral Milk Hotel lovers briefly interested in world music and field recordings before retreating back to indie rock (which they were then karmically punished for by the formation of Minus the Bear).
Now, with Mangum fever (and Mangum himself) sweeping the nation, it seems like a good time to turn another crop of indie folks on to the “out sound” of the “real world,” and thus plans are in place to reissue Field Works Vol. 1 on vinyl — in expanded form! Co-released by “the compilation kings” Mississippi Records and Social Music Records and Tapes, the reissue will come in a full-color, deluxe tip-on sleeve with new cover art, and will include a bonus 7-inch with additional Mangum recordings, plus an insert detailing the recordings and their circumstances.
Unfortunately, a release date is still very tentative with all of Jeff’s recent activity, but Yeti’s Mike McGonigal tells us “pretty definitely” that the Field Works reissue will be available “within a year.” So at the latest, we’ll all have at least a few weeks to take in that bonus material before final galactic alignment.
• Jeff Mangum: http://walkingwallofwords.com
• Social Music Records and Tapes: http://socialmusicrecords.com