Jeffrey Nye Mangum (born 24 October 1970) is an American singer, songwriter, and musician who gained prominence as the founder, songwriter, vocalist and guitarist of Neutral Milk Hotel, as well for his co-founding of The Elephant 6 Recording Company. Mangum is characterized for his complex, lyrically dense songwriting, exemplified on the critically lauded album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, as well as for his public image as a recluse associated with his extended periods of musical inactivity and minimal press interaction. An article published in Slate described Mangum as the "Salinger of Indie Rock."
Recording career
Early life
Mangum was born in Ruston, Louisiana, where he met the other co-founding members of Elephant 6, Robert Schneider, Will Cullen Hart, and Bill Doss. Together they shared a passion for home recording, influenced by the likes of the Minutemen, John Cage, and 1960s psychedelia. Mangum's earliest musical projects included Maggot (a punk group with Will Hart), Cranberry Lifecycle (an experimental pop project, also with Hart) and Synthetic Flying Machine (which featured Bill Doss). In the early 1990s Mangum, Hart and Doss moved from Ruston to Athens, Georgia and Synthetic Flying Machine evolved into Olivia Tremor Control, led primarily by Hart and Doss. Mangum has contributed vocals, drums and sound effects to many of the Olivia's subsequent recordings, including their debut EP California Demise, released in 1994 on the Elephant 6 Recording Co. imprint.
Neutral Milk Hotel
Mangum left Athens and travelled around the United States, working on solo four-track tape recordings under the name Milk, which would soon become Neutral Milk Hotel. The earliest Neutral Milk Hotel releases included the Elephant 6 cassette Hype City Soundtrack, and Everything Is, a 7" released by Cher Doll Records. Mangum recorded his debut LP On Avery Island at Robert Schneider's Pet Sounds Studio in Denver, Colorado between 1994 and 1995. The album was released in 1996 on Merge Records in North America and Fire Records in the UK. Following the album's release, Mangum expanded Neutral Milk Hotel to include his friends Scott Spillane, Julian Koster and Jeremy Barnes. The group returned to Denver in 1997 to record In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, which was released the following year and would become one of the most highly acclaimed indie rock albums of all time.
After Neutral Milk Hotel
Mangum disbanded Neutral Milk Hotel following an extensive tour of North America and Europe, culminating in a solo set on New Year's Eve 1998 at the 40 Watt Club in Athens. Allegedly suffering from poor health and a nervous breakdown, Mangum made few public appearances until February 2001, when he performed a one-off show in New Zealand at the request of Chris Knox. That summer, Mangum released a compilation of field recordings of Bulgarian folk music on the Orange Twin label titled Orange Twin Field Works: Volume I. This was followed by a live solo album Live at Jittery Joe's, recorded by filmmaker Lance Bangs in 1997. In the fall of 2001 he joined Circulatory System and The Instruments on an East Coast tour, providing drums and vocals. While working with the people involved in the Major Organ and the Adding Machine act, a short film by the same name was curated. Mangum contributed to the soundtrack (which is a modified version of the album by the same name) as well as playing several very minor roles in the film.
In February 2002, Mangum was interviewed by Pitchfork where he discussed his emotional response to In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, his recent interest in Buddhism and Eastern thought, travelling across Europe, and working on new field recordings and sound collage pieces (under the name Korena Pang). He also expressed doubt that he would record another Neutral Milk Hotel album, "I just feel like these windows open up for something to be honest, and they don't stay open for very long. I guess my path feels sort of different now".
In the summer and fall of 2002, Mangum hosted several shows on the free-form New Jersey radio station WFMU. His playlists included excerpts from music therapy classes, musique concrète pieces, European folk music, and environmental recordings by Chris Watson. He also played a two-hour drone piece by Tony Conrad, and the entirety of Live at the Village Vanguard Again! by John Coltrane and Rock Bottom by Robert Wyatt. Mangum also debuted a lengthy new sound collage work, entitled "To Animate the Body with the Cocoon of the Her Unconscious Christ the Mother Removes Her Death Body of 1910 Only To Be Reborn in the Same Spirit as a School of Blow Fish Believing in the Coming of the Milk Christ", and credited to The Long Warm Wall of Alfred Snouts.