Whoa, Trippy: MGMT Create "The Optimizer" for New Album Visuals
It's official: Brooklyn psychedelic duo MGMT will return with their third album, called MGMT, on September 17, and it'll definitely be their trippiest yet.
To ensure just that, the band recruited "live show video instrumentalist" Alejandro Crawford to create something called the "the Optimizer." According to a statement, it will assemble "a variety of unique visual elements to accompany and illuminate the new music," providing listeners with a "simultaneously aural & optical listening experience." Ohhh coooolll!
Musically, the LP finds Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser working as a duo and focusing their songwriting around synths, following 2010's full band effort Congratulations. It was recorded at Tarbox Road Studios in upstate New York with producer Dave Fridmann, who co-produced and mixed both Congratulations and MGMT's breakout debut, Oracular Spectacular (...in addition to working on notable LPs from Tame Impala and Flaming Lips).
As previously reported, MGMT told Rolling Stone that Aphex Twin and house music largely influenced the LP's sound. "We're not trying to make music that everyone understands the first time they hear it," Goldwasser said.
MGMT are on tour all summer and fall. See the MGMT tracklist below, along with U.S. tour dates.
MGMT tracklist:
Alien Days
Cool Song No. 2
Mystery Disease
Introspection
Your Life Is a Lie
A Good Sadness
Astro-Mancy
I Love You Too, Death
Plenty Of Girls In the Sea
An Orphan Of Fortune
MGMT tour dates:
7/3, Milwaukee, WI (Summerfest)
7/5-7, Kelona, BC (Waterfront Park)
7/9, Quebec City, QC (Quebec City Summer Festival)
7/12, Lansing, MI (Common Ground Music Festival)
7/13, Cincinnati, OH (Bunbury Music Festival)
8/24, Monterey, CA (First City Festival)
8/25, Los Angeles, CA (FYF Fest)
8/26, Las Vegas, NV (Cosmopoliton)
8/29, Davis, CA (Mondavi Center)
8/31, Bend, OR (Les Schwab Amphitheater)
9/1, Troutdale, OR (Edgefield Amphitheater)
9/2, Seattle, WA (Bumbershoot)
9/4, Boise, ID (Knitting Factory)
9/5, Salt Lake City, UT (Twilight Concert Series)
9/6, Denver, CO (Fillmore Auditorium)
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