Tag Archives: Andrew VanWyngarden

FEATURED
MGMT Releases Cassingle “Alien Days” for 4-20/Zonker Harris/Record Store Day

MGMT-Alien-Days

The first single off of the hard-to-understand third LP of a band with a hard-to-pronounce name was released today— in the form of a cassette tape. We get it, guys, the ’90s were a cool time, but stop trying to make the cassingle happen. It’s not going to happen.

MGMT, that completely obscure duo by Andrew VanWyngarden ’05 and Ben Goldwasser ’05, wanted to celebrate 4/20 Zonker Harris Day Record Store Day by putting out a limited edition casette single (and also online, for those who sold their tape deck a long time ago) for “Alien Days,” which would hopefully revitalize the struggling independent record stores/the record industry as a whole. Still not as weird as that time that fellow psychedelic weirdos The Flaming Lips put out a single inside an edible gummy skull. At least they have something to aspire to.

According to VanWyngarden in an interview with Rolling Stone, “Alien Days” is “about that feeling when a parasitic alien is in your head, controlling things.” According to music blog Consequence of Sound, the tune is the band’s “latest love letter to David Bowie.” According to some anonymous sources on Foss Hill, it’s like, pretty cool, man, but I dunno if I really get it, you know?

FEATURED
Band with Hard-to-Pronounce Name Will Release Hard-to-Understand LP in June

“We’re not trying to make music that everyone understands the first time they hear it.”

This just in from Rolling Stone: Andrew VanWyngarden ’05 and Ben Goldwasser ’05, known collectively as MeGa-MeTa or Andrew Wynwasser and The Manage Mints, announced plans to release their eponymous third album in June. VanWyngarden and Goldwasser have reportedly spent the last year holed up in a cabin, tinkering with synthesizers and drum machines and guitars, and free-form jamming long into the night.

The duo’s last effort, the emphatically anti-pop Congratulations (2010), surprised many fans who were expecting a groovy, easily accessible sequel to 2007’s Oracular Spectacular. This time around, consider yourselves warned: MGMT will be “even weirder,” as VanWyngarden and Goldwasser weave patchworks of house-influenced, rhythmically complex, electro-cosmic tracks such as “Mystery Disease” and “Alien Days.” “The recording process was really strange,” confirmed co-producer Dave Fridmann (though Justin Vernon did do a similar thing Forever Ago, albeit acoustically and roughly 815 miles away). 

Continue reading →

Commercial Break

Thought it would be cool to break up the event posts (trust me: there’s more comin’), so here – stop doing homework and enjoy some assorted internet treasures :

  • Here is a Wespeak written by Mandrew VanSoundgarden ’05 (of The MGMNTs fame) about those ice cream cookie sandwich things they have at WeShop, from 2001. Can anyone check and see if we still stock the same brands?
  • Reddit (‘sup?) sent me to this rather interesting article about the genius that everyone forgot, once he stopped pumping out groundbreaking mathematics research/otherwise doing what was expected from a three-year-old with an IQ measured at 178.
  • Historically relevant on this day: Michael Roth‘s “Leave Out the Politics just this Once, Dear God” blog post, a blog post that dives right into the aforementioned politics as they relate to artistic expression, and some relevant photography from Flickr.
  • You guys like Hayao Miyazaki, right? Right? Of course you do. Credit to Neo “Too Cool for School (at Least this Semester, Anyway)” Sora ’13 for showing me this ’90s music video the legendary animator directed over the summer. I’m sure you guys can come up with some kind of Miyazaki Trope Drinking Game to play for this. Sunday night is the best night for drinking games. Always.

Don’t forget: if you want to take the stick shift to this post’s automatic transmission, you can use the filters at the top of the page to change the Wesleying stream from the default (everything) to just events or events we forgot to properly categorize assorted features with the events filtered out.

2010/2011: Closing Remarks

Spring semester is over, Reunion and Commencement is days past, and I’ve flown 2/3 of the way across the country from Connecticut, so I guess it’s official: the school year is over (for most). And it’s been a pretty crazy one. So this is farewell. Farewell to eager-eyed freshmen getting acquainted to their EastCo dorm rooms, some of us dropping two classes at the beginning of the semester (to pick up three more), and punk concerts in Memorial Chapel. Farewell to Fall Break being too short, exam week too long, and Winter Break even more too longer.

Farewell to the first Snow Day since the last time a cult leader claimed the Rapture was coming. Farewell to snickering to ourselves or the ACB while scrolling through prefrosh facebook groups. Farewell to ruining my hearing forever. Farewell to Wordsmith, Mel and Josh (as a duo [for the moment]), Flora and Fauna, and any/every other outbound artist I’ve neglected to list here.  Farewell to controversy?

Farewell to fuckyeahnouns facebook event pictures (hopefully not for long). Farewell to anonymous commenters (or not, am I right?!). Farewell to WeScam. Farewell to the University hiring people to wash  chalking away from the top of Foss Hill, to the ire of students, alumni, and even random documentary filmmakers (seriously: ask Zach or myself about the documentary filmmakers).

But most of all, farewell to…idk, lol.

I feel now the most tasteful way to send you all off to your jobs, internships, or sudden urges to backpack around Europe is with a random video found by searching “wesleyan goodbye” on YouTube…so here you go. Here’s to doin’ it even nastier next year (Save the Date: Werner Herzog’s 69th Birthday).