The other day 4AD Records sent out an up-date regarding its stable of artists. Most interesting was news of Deerhunter recording an intimate live show in New York at the city’s premiere Soho Apple Store. The show occurred late last year, and it marked the first in a series of live performances at the store. Now, Apple has made the session exclusively available at their iTunes store as an 8-song digital-only EP, entitled “iTunes Live from Soho” (get it here).
Pitchfork has provided a preview of the session in the form of the opening cut, “Desire Lines” (stream it here). It’s my favorite track off the band’s last album, Halcyon Digest (buy it on vinyl here). However, when I first heard the smattering of applause and the “Hi, everyone. Thanks for coming out,” from singer Bradford Cox on the iTunes session, I was not hopeful for the sound quality. But then the song started, bounding by the booming bass guitar line, and in that second, I knew the sonics would be amazing. It’s particularity impressive for such a noisy song, filled with dense droning layers of guitars. I know no one right now who have created a dronescape as masterful as the last half of this 6:44 song. If anyone knows a band that can drone as awesome as Deerhunter do on this song, correct me.
The preview track cuts off at the end, so I imagine it flows nicely in the next track, “Hazel St.” Here are the rest of the tracks, by the way (and the cover art):
01 Desire Lines
02 Hazel St.
03 Don’t Cry
04 Revival
05 Helicopter
06 Fountain Stairs
07 Rainwater Cassette Exchange
08 He Would Have Laughed
It’s an iTunes exclusive, so you’ll have to get it there, and only there. It’s a good price for $3.99 in the US, though I hear it’s as much as 8 Euros for those in Europe. For $3.99, I’m off to make my purchase.
