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81-575: Throughout the 1990s, the Mountain Goats were known for producing low-fidelity home recordings (most notably, on a cassette deck boombox ) and releasing recordings in cassette or vinyl 7-inch formats. Since 2002, the Mountain Goats have adopted a more polished approach, often recording studio albums with a full band. The band's name is a reference to the Screamin' Jay Hawkins song "Yellow Coat". Darnielle released his first recording as

162-477: A broad range of musicians from underground circles to build fan bases through the dissemination of their cassette tapes. Music critic Richie Unterberger cited Moore as "one of the most famous" of the "few artists in cassetteland [that] established a reputation, if even a cult one." From 1979 until the early 1980s, Moore was a staff member on WFMU, hosting a weekly "Bedroom Radio" show. Berger's "Low-Fi" program followed thereafter and effectively established lo-fi as

243-566: A chapter titled "The Lo-Fi Top 10", which mentioned Hasil Adkins , the Velvet Underground , Half Japanese , Billy Childish , Beat Happening, Royal Trux , Sebadoh, Liz Phair , Guided By Voices, Daniel Johnston, Beck and Pavement. Richie Unterberger's Unknown Legends of Rock 'n' Roll: Psychedelic Unknowns, Mad Geniuses, Punk Pioneers, Lo-Fi Mavericks & More and "the community of like-minded critics and fans surrounding him" were especially pivotal in establishing modern notions of

324-475: A distinct change in focus for the Mountain Goats project, being the first in a series of concept albums that explore aspects of The Mountain Goats' canon in depth. All Hail West Texas featured the resurrection of Darnielle's early boom box recording for a complete album. Darnielle considers this album to be the culmination of his lo-fi recording style. Tallahassee , the first Mountain Goats album to be recorded with

405-498: A distinct movement associated with the spirit of punk. JW Farquhar 's home-recorded 1973 album The Formal Female , according to critic Ned Raggett, could also be regarded as a forerunner to "any number of" independent lo-fi artists, including R. Stevie Moore and the underground Texas musician Jandek . In 1980, the Welsh trio Young Marble Giants released their only album, Colossal Youth , featuring stark instrumentation, including

486-487: A faculty member at Pomona College , Northwestern University , and Bard College . In addition to his own recordings, Bruno worked on The Mountain Goats albums Tallahassee and The Sunset Tree . He also records with The Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle as The Extra Lens . Jenny Toomey and Calexico released Tempting , a collection of Bruno's songs, on Misra Records in December 2002. Civics ,

567-608: A full band and in a studio, explores and concludes the relationship of a couple whose lives were the subject of the song cycle known as the Alpha Series. It was the first album to be released on a major label, marking the start of the 4AD years of the band. Also released that year was Martial Arts Weekend , attributed to The Extra Glenns , a collaboration with Franklin Bruno on several previously unreleased Mountain Goats songs. Following that recording, Bruno joined Darnielle in

648-425: A loosely-defined music genre referring to artists who record at home, rather than at traditional recording spaces. "Bedroom pop" has also been invoked to describe a distinct aesthetic. Writing in 2006, Tammy LaGorce of The New York Times identified "bedroom pop" as "bloglike music that tries to make the world a better place through a perfect homemade song". By the 2010s, journalists would indiscriminately apply

729-414: A more thematically focused and experimental sound. This period was marked by Darnielle's collaborations with other artists including Alastair Galbraith and Simon Joyner . In November 1996, Darnielle announced a vow to "clear his musical tendency for profanity" to promote a more optimistic reception to the ideas outlined in his material. In 1995, the album Sweden was released. Soon after its recording,

810-620: A new record by The Extra Lens , formerly The Extra Glenns, entitled Undercard , followed by another Mountain Goats LP, All Eternals Deck , in 2011. They were also chosen by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival that he was due to curate in December 2011 in Minehead, England, but were unable to appear due to a rescheduling. The band's fourteenth studio album, Transcendental Youth ,

891-509: A pioneer". When a 2006 New York Times reporter referenced Moore as the progenitor of "bedroom pop", Moore responded that the notion was "hilarious" in light of his "bitter struggle to make a living and get some notoriety, I scoff at it." In 1979, Tascam introduced the Portastudio , the first portable multi-track recorder of its kind to incorporate an "all-in-one" approach to overdubbing , mixing, and bouncing . This technology allowed

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972-540: A primitive drum machine, and a decidedly "bedroom" aura. Davyd Smith of the Evening Standard later wrote, "It's hard to imagine a more lo-fi, unambitious sound." Throughout the following decade, the indie rock spheres of the American underground (bands such as college radio favorite R.E.M. ), along with some British post-punk bands, were the most prominent exports of lo-fi music. According to AllMusic,

1053-554: A record "which mimics aspects of Brian's compositional style in its abrupt transitions, mixture of various pop styles, and unusual production effects. The commercial failure of the Beach Boys' experiments was hardly motivation for imitation." In 2018, Pitchfork ' s Sam Sodsky noted that the "fingerprints" of Wizard remain "evident on bedroom auteurs to this day". Among other notable examples, writers of The Wire credit Skip Spence 's Oar (1969) as "a progenitor of both

1134-506: A remix of the track " Lovecraft in Brooklyn " from the album, and in return Darnielle contributed vocals to his album None Shall Pass , in the song "Coffee". In 2009, Darnielle and Vanderslice collaborated on the record Moon Colony Bloodbath . Released in a limited vinyl run of 1000 and sold during their "Gone Primitive" tour, the EP was a concept record about organ harvesting colonies on

1215-528: A result of imperfect sound-reproduction or - modulation equipment... Hypothetically, at least, lo-fi effects are created during recording and production itself, and perceptibly remain in master recordings that are then identically copied for release." Bruce Bartlett, in his 2013 guide Practical Recording Techniques , states that "lo-fi sounds might have a narrow frequency response (a thin, cheap sound), and might include noise such as hiss or record scratches. They could be distorted or wobbly in pitch." He offers

1296-439: A sequel titled Hail and Farewell, Gothenburg was recorded, but never released. It remained unheard by the general public until 2007, when it was leaked against Darnielle's wishes. In 1996, the Mountain Goats released the album Nothing for Juice , and Full Force Galesburg the following year. Rachel Ware left the band between recording the two albums, and bassist Peter Hughes took over her position. Between 1998 and 2000,

1377-522: A spoken-word track ("Intro") in which he teaches the listener about recording flaws for an egg hunt -type game he calls "Sounds of the Studio". He used the money gained from the album's success to build a personal recording studio in New York, where he recorded the less successful 1973 follow-up A Wizard, a True Star . Musicologist Daniel Harrison compared the Beach Boys' late-1960s albums to Wizard ,

1458-454: A synonym for "warm" or "punchy" when it should be reserved for music that "sounds like it's recorded onto a broken answering-machine". The notion of "bedroom musicians" first emerged in the 21st century following the rise of laptop computers in many forms of popular or avant-garde music . Since then, there had been an increasing tendency to group all home-recorded music under the umbrella of "lo-fi". From these developments came "bedroom pop",

1539-402: A way to achieve an authentic lo-fi aesthetic, mirroring a similar trend in the 1990s concerning the revival of 1960s space age pop and analog synthesizers. R. Stevie Moore was increasingly cited by emerging lo-fi acts as a primary influence. His most vocal advocate, Ariel Pink , had read Unknown Legends , and later recorded a cover version of one of the tracks included in a CD that came with

1620-406: Is harmonic distortion , which can occur when an audio signal is amplified beyond the dynamic range of a device. However, this effect is not usually considered to be an imperfection. The same process is used for the electric guitar sounds of rock and roll , and since the advent of digital recording , to give a recording a feeling of "analogue warmth". Distortion that is generated as a byproduct of

1701-399: Is an American singer-songwriter, academic and writer originally from Upland, California . He has been a member of Nothing Painted Blue since its inception in 1986. Bruno has written music criticism for online and print publications such as The Village Voice . In 2004, he received a doctorate in philosophy from UCLA . As of 2020 , he is a lecturer at SUNY Purchase . Previously he has been

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1782-524: Is generally suggested that the term was popularized through William Berger's weekly half-hour radio show on the New Jersey–based independent radio station WFMU , titled Low-Fi , which lasted from 1986 to 1987. The program's contents consisted entirely of contributions solicited via mail and ran during a thirty-minute prime time evening slot every Friday. In the fall 1986 issue of the WFMU magazine LCD ,

1863-533: Is just grunge with even grungier production values." In turn, he said, lo-fi inspired its own reaction in the form of " post-rock ". A reaction against both grunge and lo-fi, according to AllMusic, was chamber pop , which drew heavily from the rich orchestrations of Brian Wilson, Burt Bacharach , and Lee Hazlewood . "Lo-fi" was applied inconsistently throughout the 1990s. Writing in the book Hop on Pop (2003), Tony Grajeda said that by 1995, Rolling Stone magazine "managed to label every other band it featured in

1944-587: The Late Show with David Letterman . On April 6, 2015, the band performed "Foreign Object" on Late Night with Seth Meyers while promoting Beat the Champ . In July 2019, the band performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert , with Stephen Colbert joining in to sing "This Year". Lo-fi music Lo-fi (also typeset as lofi or low-fi ; short for low fidelity ) is a music or production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in

2025-571: The Get Lonely tour. The band recorded tracks for its next album at Prairie Sun studios. Entitled Heretic Pride , the album was released on 19 February 2008. Produced by John Vanderslice and Scott Solter, the album saw Darnielle, Hughes, and Wurster joined by Franklin Bruno, Erik Friedlander, Annie Clark (better known by her stage name, St. Vincent), and members of The Bright Mountain Choir. American alternative hip hop artist Aesop Rock released

2106-811: The Moon . This was followed by the next full Mountain Goats album, The Life of the World to Come , which released in October of the same year. The album is composed of twelve tracks, each one inspired by (and titled after) a single verse of the Christian Bible . In publicizing the record, the band made their first ever television appearance, performing "Psalms 40:2" on The Colbert Report , hosted by professed Mountain Goats fan Stephen Colbert . The Mountain Goats signed to Merge Records , home to drummer Jon Wurster's other band, Superchunk , in 2010. The label issued

2187-480: The "lo-fi" label, and throughout the 1990s, such ideas became central to how "lo-fi" was popularly understood. Consequently, in 2003, the Oxford Dictionary added a second definition for the term—"a genre of rock music characterized by minimal production, giving a raw and unsophisticated sound". The identity of the party or parties who popularized the use of "lo-fi" cannot be determined definitively. It

2268-466: The 1980s, "lo-fi" has been connected with cassette culture , the DIY ethos of punk, primitivism , outsider music , authenticity , slacker / Generation X stereotypes, and cultural nostalgia . The notion of "bedroom" musicians expanded following the rise of modern digital audio workstations , leading to the invention of the nearly synonymous term bedroom pop . In the late 2000s, lo-fi aesthetics served as

2349-604: The Dative , and Yam, the King of Crops . In 1994, the Mountain Goats released their first full-length studio album , Zopilote Machine , on Ajax Records . It is the band's only full album featuring the entirety of the Bright Mountain Choir. By 1995, most of what could be considered classic Mountain Goats conventions (boom-box recording, song series, Latin quotes, and mythological themes) were abandoned in favor of

2430-539: The Grifters , Silver Jews , Liz Phair, Smog , Superchunk , Portastatic and Royal Trux have been largely omitted owing either to the comparative paucity of their reception or to its lesser relevance to lo-fi aesthetics." From the late 1990s to 2000s, "lo-fi" was absorbed into regular indie discourse, where it mostly lost its connotations as an indie rock subcategory evoking "the slacker generation", "looseness", or "self-consciousness". Pitchfork and The Wire became

2511-589: The Last Pagans , and was released digitally on April 10, 2020, with a limited physical release on cassette through Merge Records. The Mountain Goats announced in August 2020 that the band's nineteenth studio album, Getting Into Knives , would be released on October 23, 2020, on CD, vinyl, cassette, and digital. In April 2021, the Mountain Goats announced their album Dark in Here , released on June 25, alongside

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2592-470: The Mountain Goats ( Taboo VI: The Homecoming , on Shrimper Records ) in 1991. Many of his first recordings and performances featured Darnielle accompanied by members of the all-girl reggae band the Casual Girls, who became known as the Bright Mountain Choir. One of this group's members, Rachel Ware, continued to accompany Darnielle on bass, both live and in studio, until 1995. The first five years of

2673-432: The Mountain Goats slowed down their prolific output, releasing The Coroner's Gambit in October 2000. The album partially returned to the band's roots, as most songs were sporadically recorded on Darnielle's old Panasonic RX-FT500 cassette deck Boombox , which produced a loud background noise to the songs. 2002 saw the release of two Mountain Goats albums: All Hail West Texas and Tallahassee . These albums mark

2754-462: The Mountain Goats' career saw a prolific output of songs on cassette, vinyl and CD. These releases spanned multiple labels and countries of origin, often released in limited numbers. The focus of the Mountain Goats project was the urgency of writing. Songs not recorded adequately to tape within days of being written were often forgotten. Cassette releases during this time include The Hound Chronicles , Transmissions to Horace , Hot Garden Stomp , Taking

2835-494: The World , defined the term as "unfavourable signal-to-noise ratio ." There was virtually no appreciation for the imperfections of lo-fi music among critics until the 1980s, during which there was an emergent romanticism for home-recording and " do-it-yourself " (DIY) qualities. Afterward, "DIY" was often used interchangeably with "lo-fi". By the end of the 1980s, qualities such as "home-recorded", "technically primitive", and "inexpensive equipment" were commonly associated with

2916-538: The album, and soon thereafter became a full-time member. In January 2017, the Mountain Goats recorded a humorous song per request of director Rian Johnson , depicting an alternate story of his upcoming movie, Star Wars: The Last Jedi . The song, titled "The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones", was published on Johnson's SoundCloud page. In May 2017, they released their sixteenth studio album, Goths . The band has stated that Goths

2997-721: The albums were later referred to as part of Wilson's so-called Bedroom Tapes . Although Smiley Smile was initially met with confusion and disappointment, appreciation for the album grew after other artists released albums that reflected a similarly flawed and stripped-down quality, including Bob Dylan 's John Wesley Harding (1967) and the Beatles ' White Album (1968). Pitchfork writer Mark Richardson credited Smiley Smile with inventing "the kind of lo-fi bedroom pop that would later propel Sebadoh , Animal Collective , and other characters." Editors at Rolling Stone credited Wild Honey with originating "the idea of DIY pop". In

3078-819: The band in August 2024, citing "health and sanity" concerns among other reasons. Studio albums In the Showtime television series Weeds , the band performed the Theme to Weeds (Malvina Reynolds’ " Little Boxes ") during the opening credits of Season 8, Episode 5. The Adult Swim show Moral Orel featured "Love, Love, Love", "Old College Try", and " No Children " on several episodes of Season 3. The band made their television debut on October 6, 2009, playing "Psalms 40:2" on The Colbert Report . On January 19, 2010, they played "Genesis 3:23" on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon . On February 23, 2011, they played "Birth of Serpents" in support of their album, All Eternals Deck , on

3159-479: The basis of the chillwave and hypnagogic pop music genres. At its most crudely sketched, lo-fi was primitivist and realist in the 1980s, postmodern in the 1990s, and archaicist in the 2000s. —Adam Harper, Lo-Fi Aesthetics in Popular Music Discourse (2014) Lo-fi is the opposite of High fidelity . Music educator R. Murray Schafer , in the glossary for his 1977 book The Tuning of

3240-523: The book ("Bright Lit Blue Skies"). At the time of his label debut, Pink was viewed as a novelty act, as there were virtually no other contemporary indie artists with a similar retro lo-fi sound. Previous lo-fi artists generally rejected the influence of 1980s pop radio that informed most of Pink's sound. Afterward, a type of music dubbed "hypnagogic pop" emerged among lo-fi and post- noise musicians who engaged with elements of cultural nostalgia , childhood memory, and outdated recording technology. The label

3321-446: The concept of a lo-fi movement coalesced between 1992 and 1994. Centered on artists such as Guided by Voices , Sebadoh , Beck , and Pavement , most of the writing about alternative and lo-fi aligned it with Generation X and " slacker " stereotypes that originated from Douglas Coupland 's novel Generation X and Richard Linklater 's film Slacker (both released 1991) which led to the genre being called " slacker rock ". Some of

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3402-570: The context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a deliberate stylistic choice. The standards of sound quality ( fidelity ) and music production have evolved over the decades, meaning that some older examples of lo-fi may not have been originally recognized as such. Lo-fi began to be recognized as a style of popular music in the 1990s, when it became alternately referred to as DIY music (from " do it yourself "). Some subsets of lo-fi music have become popular for their perceived nostalgic and/or relaxing qualities, which originate from

3483-456: The course of the decades to follow." During the 1990s, the media's usage of the word "indie" evolved from music "produced away from the music industry's largest record labels" to a particular style of rock or pop music viewed in the US as the "alternative to ' alternative '". Following the success of Nirvana 's Nevermind (1991), alternative rock became a cultural talking point, and subsequently,

3564-597: The critical discourse interested in lo-fi was based in New York or London, the musicians themselves were largely from lesser metropolitan areas of the US. Since 1968, R. Stevie Moore had been recording full-length albums on reel-to-reel tape in his parents' basement in Tennessee , but it was not until 1976's Phonography that any of his recordings were issued on a record label. The album achieved some notoriety among New York's punk and new wave circles. Matthew Ingram of The Wire wrote that "Moore might not have been

3645-492: The delineation between grunge and lo-fi came with respect to the music's " authenticity ". Even though Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was well known for being fond of Johnston, K Records, and the Shaggs , there was a faction of indie rock that viewed grunge as a sell-out genre, believing that the imperfections of lo-fi was what gave the music its authenticity. In April 1993, the term "lo-fi" gained mainstream currency after it

3726-697: The difference as "phonographic" and "non-phonographic imperfections". He defines the former as "elements of a recording that are perceived (or imagined to be perceived) as detrimental to it and that originate in the specific operation of the recording medium itself. Today, they are usually the first characteristics people think about when the subject of 'lo-fi' is brought up." Recording imperfections may "fall loosely into two categories, distortion and noise", in Harper's view, although he acknowledges that definitions of "distortion" and "noise" vary and sometimes overlap. The most prominent form of distortion in lo-fi aesthetics

3807-401: The early 1970s, there were a few other major recording artists who released music recorded with portable multi-tracking equipment; examples included Paul McCartney and Todd Rundgren . Produced shortly after the Beatles' break-up , the home-recorded solo release McCartney was among the best-selling albums of 1970, but was critically panned. In 2005, after an interviewer suggested that it

3888-495: The emergence of punk rock and new wave in the late 1970s, some sectors of popular music began to espouse a DIY ethos that heralded a wave of independent labels , distribution networks, fanzines and recording studios, and many guitar bands were formed on the then-novel premise that one could record and release their own music instead of having to procure a record contract from a major label. Lo-fi musicians and fans were predominantly white, male and middle-class, and while most of

3969-649: The first album of directly autobiographical material. We Shall All Be Healed chronicles Darnielle's life with a group of friends and acquaintances addicted to methamphetamine in Portland, Oregon , though the album is set in Pomona, California . The following year, the band's second Vanderslice-produced album, The Sunset Tree , was released. Again autobiographical, Darnielle tackled the subject of his early childhood spent with an abusive stepfather. Darnielle had previously dealt with this subject in what he often refers to as

4050-603: The first half [of the year] as somehow lo-fi." One journalist in Spin credited Sebadoh's Sebadoh III (1991) with "inventing" lo-fi, characterizing the genre as "the soft rock of punk". Additionally, virtually every journalist referenced an increasing media coverage of lo-fi music while failing to acknowledge themselves as contributors to the trend. Several books were published that helped to "canonize" lo-fi acts, usually by comparing them favorably to older musicians. For example, Rolling Stone's Alt-Rock-a-Rama (1995) contained

4131-439: The first rock musician to go entirely solo, recording every part from drums to guitar ... However, he was the first to explicitly aestheticize the home recording process itself ... making him the great-grandfather of lo-fi." Asked if he supported the "DIY/lo-fi pioneer label", Moore explained that his approach resulted from "happenstance" rather than a calculated artistic decision, although he agreed that he "should be recognized as

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4212-403: The following methods for replicating lo-fi sounds: mixing levels so that they are unbalanced; placing obstructions between a microphone and the sound sources; placing the microphone in an unusual spot, such as in a wastebasket; recording with older, lower-quality instruments or equipment; and highlighting spill and sound reflections . DIY music predates written history , but "lo-fi" as it

4293-669: The genre existed." In 2016, Billboard writer Joe Lynch described David Bowie 's Hunky Dory (1971) as "pretty much the blueprint for every lo-fi indie pop album of the last 25 years", citing Ariel Pink as a descendant. Active since 1969, Stavely Makepeace , and their spinoff group Lieutenant Pigeon , were described by AllMusic 's Richie Unterberger as creating "quirky, slightly lo-fi homemade production married to simple pop songs with heavy echoes of both '50s rock & roll and British novelty music ." Michael Heatley of Record Collector describes Wizzard 's debut album Wizzard Brew (1973) as "lo-fi, retro rock'n'roll ". With

4374-437: The godfather of home recording "), Paul McCartney ( McCartney ), Todd Rundgren , Peter Ivers , Jandek , Daniel Johnston , Neutral Milk Hotel , Guided by Voices , Sebadoh , Beck , Pavement , and Ariel Pink . Although "lo-fi" has been in the cultural lexicon for approximately as long as " high fidelity ", WFMU disc jockey William Berger is usually credited with popularizing the term in 1986. At various points since

4455-465: The imperfections that define the genre. Traditionally, lo-fi has been characterized by the inclusion of elements normally viewed as undesirable in professional contexts, such as misplayed notes, environmental interference, or phonographic imperfections (degraded audio signals , tape hiss , and so on). Pioneering, influential, or otherwise significant artists include the Beach Boys ( Smiley Smile and Wild Honey ), R. Stevie Moore (often called "

4536-455: The indie rock subculture. Beck, whose 1994 single " Loser " was recorded in a kitchen and reached the Billboard top 10, ultimately became the most recognizable artist associated with the "lo-fi" tag. As a response to the "lo-fi" label, Guided by Voices bandleader Robert Pollard denied having any association to its supposed movement. He said that although the band was being "championed as

4617-433: The leading publications on music, while blogs and smaller websites took on the role previously occupied by fanzines . The rise of modern digital audio workstations dissolved a theoretical technological division between professional and non-professional artists. Many of the prominent lo-fi acts of the 1990s adapted their sound to more professional standards and "bedroom" musicians began looking toward vintage equipment as

4698-551: The lo-fi aesthetic. According to Adam Harper: "In short, Unknown Legends bridges the interests of the [1980s] and the [Cassette Culture] Generation and those of [the 2000s], providing an early sketch, a portent – a 'leftfield blueprint', perhaps – of 00s movements like hauntology and hypnagogic pop ". The "lo-fi" tag also extended to acts such as the Mountain Goats , Nothing Painted Blue , Chris Knox , Alastair Galbraith , and Lou Barlow . "Other significant artists often aligned with 1990s lo-fi", Harper wrote, "such as Ween ,

4779-420: The loner/stoner and lo-fi movements", adding that the album "would not find a real audience for decades." Record Collector ' s Jamie Atkins wrote in 2018 that many lo-fi acts would be indebted to the reverb-saturated sound of the Beach Boys' 1970 song " All I Wanna Do ". Pitchfork writer Madison Bloom crowned Peter Ivers , a 1970s Los Angeles musician, as "the weirdo king of bedroom pop, decades before

4860-467: The movement after the term's definition evolved in the mid 1990s. Elsewhere, WFMU DJ Irwin Chusid was responsible for inventing and popularizing the " outsider music " category — much of it overlapping with lo-fi. Adam Harper credits the outsider musicians Daniel Johnston and Jandek with "form[ing] a bridge between 1980s primitivism and the lo-fi indie rock of the 1990s. ... both musicians introduced

4941-462: The notion that lo-fi was not just acceptable but the special context of some extraordinary and brilliant musicians." Hailing from New Zealand, the Tall Dwarfs ' mid-1980s records are credited with anticipating the lo-fi sound. AllMusic wrote that Tall Dwarfs' home-recorded releases presaged "the rise of what was ultimately dubbed 'lo-fi' as the sound began to grow in prominence and influence over

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5022-453: The only "extensively autobiographical" song he had written before 2004, the 1999 unreleased song "You're in Maya". The Mountain Goats relocated to Durham, North Carolina in 2006, and issued Get Lonely , which was produced by Scott Solter , who had worked with Vanderslice on engineering for prior Mountain Goats records. Jon Wurster joined the group in 2007, playing drums on the last leg of

5103-577: The performance ("coughing, sniffing, page-turning and chair sounds") or the environment ("passing vehicles, household noises, the sounds of neighbours and animals"). Harper acknowledges that the "appreciation of distortion and noise is not limited to lo-fi aesthetics, of course, and lo-fi aesthetics ... does not extend to all appreciations for distortion and noise. The difference lies in the ways in which distortion and noise are understood to be imperfections in lo-fi." He also distinguishes between "recording imperfections" and "sonic imperfections [that] occur as

5184-407: The pioneers of the lo-fi movement," he was not familiar with the term, and explained that "[a] lot of people were picking up [Tascam] machines at the time ... Using a four-track became common enough that they had to find a category for it: DIY, lo-fi, whatever." At the time, music critic Simon Reynolds interpreted the seeming-movement as a reaction against grunge music, "and a weak one, since lo-fi

5265-399: The program was described as "home recordings produced on inexpensive equipment. Technical primitivism coupled with brilliance." A third definition was added to the Oxford Dictionary in 2008: "unpolished, amateurish, or technologically unsophisticated, esp. as a deliberate aesthetic choice." In 2017, About.com ' s Anthony Carew argued that the term "lo-fi" had been commonly misused as

5346-612: The recording process ("phonographic distortion") is typically avoided in professional contexts. "Tape saturation" and "saturation distortion" alternately describe the harmonic distortion that occurs when a tape head approaches its limit of residual magnetization (a common aspect of tape recorder maintenance that is fixed with degaussing tools). Effects include a decrease in high-frequency signals and an increase in noise. Generally, lo-fi recordings are likely to have little or no frequency information above 10 kilohertz. "Non-phonographic" imperfections may involve noises that are generated by

5427-491: The release of its first single "Mobile". The album was recorded at FAME Studios . The band's 21st album, Bleed Out , was released on August   19, 2022. In July 2023, the band announced their 22nd album Jenny from Thebes , a "rock opera about a woman named Jenny", would be released on October   27, 2023. The character "Jenny" has appeared in several previous songs by the band, notably in several from All Hail West Texas . Peter Hughes announced his departure from

5508-400: The rough sound quality resulting from such an approach, or D.I.Y., an acronym for "do it yourself", this tradition is distinguished by an aversion to state-of-the-art recording techniques. ... In a world of sterile, digitally recorded Top 40, lo-fi elucidates the raw seams of the artistic process. The main focus in the piece was Beck and Guided by Voices, who had recently become popular acts in

5589-416: The studio along with bassist Peter Hughes , who was the second official member of the band and accompanied Darnielle on tour. These three musicians formed what was considered the Mountain Goats studio band. In 2004, the Mountain Goats released We Shall All Be Healed . The album marked a number of changes for the Mountain Goats, as it was the first time Darnielle worked with producer John Vanderslice , and

5670-488: The stylistic variety of their music often "fluctuated from simple pop and rock songs to free-form song structures to pure noise and arty experimentalism." Similar scenes also developed among DIY cassette-trading hip-hop and hardcore punk acts. One of the most recognizable bands was Beat Happening (1984–1992) from K Records , an influential indie pop label. They were rarely known as a "lo-fi" group during their active years, and were only noted for their pioneering role in

5751-531: The term to any music with a "fuzzy" production quality, Daniel Wray of The Guardian defined the term in 2020 as a genre of home-recorded music with a "dreamy, introspective and intimate" sound, and one which spans "across indie, pop, R&B and emo ". Jenessa Williams of The Forty-Five called "bedroom pop" almost synonymous with "lo-fi", having been traditionally used as "a flattering way to dress up homespun demos and slacker aesthetics" before being recontextualized in later years as " midwestern emo without

5832-674: The thrashing; Soundcloud rap without the braggadocio." Many of the associated artists have rejected the label. Lo-fi aesthetics are idiosyncrasies associated with the recording process. More specifically, those that are generally viewed in the field of audio engineering as undesirable effects, such as a degraded audio signal or fluctuations in tape speed. The aesthetic may also extend to substandard or disaffected musical performances. Recordings deemed unprofessional or "amateurish" are usually with respect to performance (out-of-tune or out-of-time notes) or mixing (audible hiss, distortion , or room acoustics). Musicologist Adam Harper identifies

5913-638: Was accompanied by a live music stream from the Wizards of the Coast headquarters. In March 2020, while the COVID-19 pandemic left the band unable to tour, Darnielle retrieved his old Panasonic RX-FT500 tape deck and recorded 10 new songs, using the direct-to-boombox method for the first time since 2002's All Hail West Texas . The resulting album, entitled Songs for Pierre Chuvin , was inspired by Darnielle's reading of Pierre Chuvin 's 1990 book A Chronicle of

5994-738: Was essentially psychedelic music . Adam Harper reflected in 2013 that there was a growing tendency among critics such as Simon Reynolds to overstate Pink's influence by failing to acknowledge predecessors such as R. Stevie Moore and the Cleaners from Venus ' Martin Newell . In the late 2010s, a form of downtempo music tagged as " lo-fi hip hop " or "chillhop" became popular among YouTube music streamers. Several of these YouTube channels attracted millions of followers. Franklin Bruno Franklin Bruno (born December 29, 1968)

6075-528: Was featured as a headline in The New York Times . The most widely-read article was published by the same paper in August 1994 with the headline "Lo-Fi Rockers Opt for Raw Over Slick". In contrast to a similar story ran in the paper seven years earlier, which never deployed "lo-fi" in the context of an unprofessional recording, writer Matt Deihl conflated "lo-fi" with "DIY" and "a rough sound quality". He wrote: Alternately called lo-fi, referring to

6156-568: Was inspired by an adolescence listening to The Cure , Bauhaus , Siouxsie and the Banshees , and Joy Division , as well as hearing songs on the Californian radio station KROQ-FM . In January 2019, the band announced the April 26 release of their Dungeons & Dragons inspired album, In League with Dragons (and released initial single, "Younger"), via Merge Records. The announcement

6237-426: Was invented by journalist David Keenan in an August 2009 piece for The Wire , which included Pink among his examples. Pink was frequently referred to as the "godfather" of hypnagogic, chillwave or glo-fi as new acts that were associated with him (aesthetically, personally, geographically, or professionally) attracted notice from critics. According to Pitchfork ' s Marc Hogan, each of those tags described what

6318-531: Was possibly "one of the first big lo-fi records of its day", McCartney commented that it was "interesting" that younger fans were "looking back at something like that with some kind of respect", before adding that the album's "sort of ... hippie simplicity ... kind of resonates at this point in time, somehow." Something/Anything? (released in February 1972) was recorded almost entirely by Rundgren alone. The album included many of his best-known songs, as well as

6399-425: Was released in late 2012, and in early 2013 they played at Carnegie Hall in support of John Green and Hank Green in their "Evening of Awesome" performance. In July 2013, All Hail West Texas was re-released on vinyl. During an interview with Stereogum in August 2012, John Darnielle said that Amy Grant was his favorite pop artist, and noted that " Rich Mullins is one of the best songwriters I know of." Mullins

6480-402: Was the songwriter who penned many of Grant's hits. The Mountain Goats released their 15th album, Beat the Champ , on 7 April 2015, again with Merge Records . According to Pitchfork Media , the album concentrates on the professional wrestlers Darnielle admired when he was a child and tries to develop and imagine their lives. Multi-instrumentalist Matt Douglas assisted the group in recording

6561-562: Was understood after the 1990s can be traced to 1950s rock and roll. AllMusic writes that the genre's recordings were made "cheaply and quickly, often on substandard equipment. In that sense, the earliest rock & roll records, most of the garage rock of the '60s, and much of the punk rock of the late '70s could be tagged as Lo-Fi." Released in 1967, the Beach Boys ' albums Smiley Smile and Wild Honey were lo-fi albums recorded mostly in Brian Wilson's makeshift home studio ;

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