M MG TT

WORLD TOUR 2010

SHIFTINGPSYCHEDELICSHAPE

SHIFTINGPSYCHEDELIC

POP

40 years after the Summer of Love (and 30 years after the Summer of Hate), MGMT is celebrating the grand re-opening of the third eye of the world with Oracular Spectacular, the duo's much anticipated first full-length album, an enigmatic and prophetic collection of hallucinatory sounds and hook-riddled pop tones for the new millennium.

Based in Brooklyn, New York City, the band MGMT comprises Ben Goldwasser and Andrew Van Wyngarden. The duo met at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and formed MGMT aka the Management in 2002, initially as a vehicle for their experiments with synthesizers and drum sounding machines.

Over time the experiments morphed into a full-blown project. The Time To Pretend EP was released on the independent Cantora Records label at the start of 2005, and revealed the duo's penchant for both early Flaming Lips-style psychedelic pop and retro new wave stylings.

After graduating from Wesleyan, the duo toured in support of the EP and relocated to New York after signing a contract with Columbia Records. Their debut album was recorded with the Flaming Lips' producer David Fridmann, and released digitally in October 2007 (and via conventional means at the start of the following year).

The playful Oracular Spectacular blended healthy doses of glam rock and new wave along with psychedelia and acid folk, adding with Fridmann's superb production helping to make sense of the duo's sometimes over reaching ambition.

ANDREW VAN WYNGARDENABOUT THE BAND

BEN GOLDWASSER

As on-campus performance provocateurs,

Andrew and Ben began staging a series of

"these obnoxious, noisy live electronic shows.

We never planned on having it be a recorded

project -- where we would write these weird

techno loops and arrangements that we could

play with live. Most of it was running live off the

computer and we had a turntable plugged into

some guitar pedals, a radio, and a tape player.

It was all electronically generated at that point.

We would write a new song for each show and

our shows would be 15 minutes long."

The One Song/One Show mentality is manifest

in the tracks of Oracular Spectacular, each

song on the album shimmers with its own

diamond-hard compression of elements which

connected within MGMT's "unusual and quite

unconventional pop structures." Continually

inverting expectations, the music of MGMT owes

as much to chaos t heory as it does to fractal

geometry. In contrast to the group's early live

shows, which were mainly electronically

generated, Oracular Spectacular is filled with

"more traditional rock instruments: electric

guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, synthesizers

all played live."

NOISE

MUSIC

Restlessly experimental and consumed with

divine discontent, the members of MGMT

embarked on a series of temporary guises. "We

went on a tour with a drummer once," Andrew

confesses, "after we'd written these weird

California Creedence Clearwater-style songs in

two weeks. We went out, played them, and

never did the songs again. A lot of people hated

it. That used to be the goal of our shows. We

were still trying to be obnoxious and somehow

people got into it. Some songs we wrote just

because we wanted to learn how to be really

bad within a certain genre and then people

started liking the song because they liked the

genre. It was an accident that people started

liking us at all."

Some of those first fans included a group of

NYU students who formed an indie label,

Cantora Records, in order to issue the very

first MGMT commercial release, Time To

Pretend (a 6-song EP, currently available on

iTunes). Two of the songs from that EP -- "Time

To Pretend" (the MGMT "mission statement")

and "Kids" ("filled with all those usual college

feelings: naivety, idealism, nostalgia, happiness,

sadness") -- have made it on to the album

Oracular Spectacular.

ROCK

MUSIC

WHAT HAVE YOU GUYS LISTENED TO THROUGH

THE YEARS THAT HAS INSPIRED YOU TO CREATE

THE MESS THAT IS MGMT? (IT'S A BEAUTIFUL

MESS, BY THE WAY!)

What a great compliment, thank you. We've

always been attracted to what we call creep

balls music, which is just really strange music.

Some people would call it bad, but we call it

good. That’s how we see it.

It's really gross music..

We like gross music, examples Ben...

Erm, Psychic TV maybe?

I guess we like it if it's pretty, but really really

strange. We like Chrome, Spiritualized and

Spacemen 3. A lot of British music too. The

oldies, the goodies!

DO YOU LIKE STUFF LIKE LOOP? IS THAT THE

SORT OF ERA?

Yeah, for sure stonery, psychey....

IS DEAD MEADOW THE KIND OF BAND YOU GUYS

WOULD LIKE TO PLAY WITH IF YOU WENT OUT ON

TOUR?

Yeah, that would be amazing. I wonder if they

would want to play with us though. They are

really nice guys. We hung out with them in

Berlin one time.

SO, 'ORACULAR SPECTACULAR'...THERE IS A

LOT OF MEAT IN THERE. THERE IS A DIFFERENT

FLAVOUR FOR EVERYONE, A BIT OF EVERYTHING.

HOW DO YOU TAKE EVERY INGREDIENT AND END

UP WITH THE PÂTÉ THAT COMES OUT?

A lot of times when we write songs we have had

some kind of influence or a style that we really

want to put into our music. Like, we'll say let's

have that part sound like this and that part

sound like that and then we piece it all together.

We didn't plan anything, it was more of a song

by song thing. We tend to be inspired a lot by

artists that switch genres each album. Each

song is different. 'Legendary Pink Dots' are a

great example of that.

When we were writing the album they were a big

influence. We literally just wrote whatever

came to us. There is a weird combination on the

album because it has a couple of older tracks on

it which were originally electronic with a more

dancey feel. 'Electric Feel' was one of the first

songs we wrote, well the first actual song with

lyrics in it anyway.

IT IS DEFINITELY ONE OF THE STAND OUT SONGS

ON THE ALBUM. YOU RECORDED WITH DAVID

FRIDMAN RIGHT? HE HAS WORKED WITH THE

FLAMING LIPSWHO ARE ONE OF THE MOST

SPECTACULAR BANDS ON THE PLANET. HOW

MUCH OF HIS INFLUENCE WAS HIS PRODUCTION

SKILLS ON THE END RESULT OF YOUR ALBUM?

When we started writing we didn't know that he

was going to produce us. I mean, we had kinda

randomly put him on this list of our top dream

producer's who we would like to work with and

we ended up talking to him on the phone and we

hit it off really well. We love his production

work. I mean, we didn't want to work with him

because we wanted to sound like the Flaming

Lips, it was more that we felt like he understood

us on a personal level and he really got out

music. We were pretty sure after talking to him

that he would make it the album we wanted.

SO, DID DAVID MIX YOUR RECORD AS WELL OR

DID YOU GET SOMEONE ELSE IN TO DO IT?

Dave mixed it and he did a lot of the mastering.

A lot of the album sounds over compressed, like

really mashed. There's times when there is full

mixed distortion, which is crazy, it sounds really

awesome. He ran the whole thing through these

crappy 90's compressors. There are so many

bands that are over compressed so they sound

loud for the radio. I hope our album sounds

loud, but not bad.

Loud loud not bad loud...

Hopefully there is still dynamics.

INTERVIEW

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HAVE YOU HAD ANY RANDOM FACES COME OUT

OF THE WOOD WORK AND SAY 'I'M A BIG FAN OF

MGMT' YET?

Famous people?

YEAH, DEAD PEOPLE, FAMOUS PEOPLE. THEY'RE

ALL THE SAME.

No dead people....

The Kings Of Leon....apparently the drummer

likes us? A lot of model's and fashion people are

getting into the album which is pretty sweet.

WHY IS THAT DO YOU THINK?

I don't really know how it started, but keep it

coming! It’s great!

There is nothing wrong with it. We love being

associated with fashion people and models. Was

that believable? [laughs]

WE ARE ALSO VERY INSPIRED BY THE FANS WHO

BRING US LOTS OF FREE DRUGS AT THE SHOWS.

DOES THIS ACTUALLY HAPPEN, I'VE HEARD THIS

RUMOUR CIRCULATING?

It actually does happen a lot. When we were on

tour in Montreal this last few weeks, like San

Diego, LA...they would be very nice and just give

us stuff. It was trimming season...

TRIMMING SEASON? EXPLAIN THAT, IF YOU

WERE TALKING TO AN ENGLISH PERSON THEY

WOULD PROBABLY THINK YOU WERE TALKING

ABOUT HAVING A 'PERSONAL HEDGE TRIM' IF

YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN?

Basically it's the harvest season, people help

with the crops and it filters through down

California to San Francisco and they gave us

some really nice presents!

DO YOU LIKE PRESENTS, ARE YOU INTO PEOPLE

BRINGING YOU PRESENTS WHEN YOU PLAY?

Yeah, it's sort of this tradition..

DO YOU THEN GIVE PRESENTS BACK TO THE

AUDIENCE? FOR EXAMPLE, THE DRUMMER OF

PAVEMENT USED TO MAKE TOAST FOR PEOPLE

IN THE CROWD.

Toast?! Erm, well we have given cookies. There

was one show when we cut open this fruit called

a Dorian, it's the king of all fruits. It's the very

smelliest fruit in the world. It's kinda like bacon

and onions mixed with rotting flesh. In fact, it's

garlic rotting flesh.

WHAT ARE YOUR TWO FAVORITE TRACKS OFF

THE RECORD...ONE EACH...

I think my favorite track from the album is

probably 'The Youth'

Mine would be '4th Dimensional Transitional'

because it is the least appreciated. It's almost

as if no one acknowledges that it exists. We

decided that the song is four dimensional and

some people can only see three dimensions.

NEXT YEAR OBVIOUSLY YOU GUYS ARE GOING TO

BE COMING BACK TO RELEASE THE ALBUM AND

AFTER THAT ARE YOU THEN THINKING OF WORLD

DOMINATION ON A MAJOR SCALE?

We would really love to go to South America or

Mexico. I think I want to live in Mexico...

THE PRESENTS WOULD BE RAD...

Yeah, cactus stuff. We still have that mentality

where we wanna wear fur coats and always be

making the music we want to make and being

good dudes. No one likes assholes. It's annoying

when people turn into assholes, we never want

to be like that.

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2005TIME TO PRETEND

2008METANOIA

2005CLIMBINGTO NEW LOWS

DISCOGRAPHYOracular Spectacular is the first major label

studio album by Brooklyn, New York indie rock

band MGMT, released digitally October 2, 2007

on Columbia Records, available in CD and LP

formats from January 22, 2008. The album,

which has sold over 1 million copies worldwide,

was nominated for best international album in

the 2009 BRIT Awards. It features new versions

of both "Kids" and "Time to Pretend", songs

from their previous release, Time to Pretend EP

(2005), the opening track serving as a "mission

statement" and theme continued through the

proceeding tracks.Pitchfork Media compared

MGMT to Muse and Mew, but weaving in an early

90s Britpop sound. Prefix Magazine said the

album "sounds like a college-dorm experiment

gone horribly right." It was named the best

album of 2008 by NME. In 2009, Rolling Stone

named it the 18th best album of the decade.

2007ORACULARSPECTACULAR

CONGRATULATIONS2010 • •

I think music is a feeling Music is passion and music is pure joy

Music is spiritual mass[ANDREW]

I Found A Whistle

Brian Eno

Pieces Of What

Weekend Wars

Song For Dan Treacy

The Youth

Flash Delirium

Electric Feel

Siberian Breaks

Someone's Missing

Time To Pretend

It's Working

SET LIST

Music is spiritual mass

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02

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17

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06

28

12

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30

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TOUR DATES

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WWW.MGMT.COM

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