Did Bradford Cox, the hideously emaciated marfan syndrome-stricken singer of Deerhunter and side project Atlas Sound inadvertently out himself as being part of the Karen O-penned songs for the soundtrack to Spike Jonze’s adaptation of “Where The Wild Things Are“?
The two are mutual admirers (O once famously called Deerhunter’s live show a near “religious experience”) and friends and in an interview today with online Atlanta mag Creative Loafing, Cox apparently let the cat out of the bag.
“When I was working in the studio [with Karen O on the ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ soundtrack], we had a lot of bizarre instruments there,” Cox said. “I made a lot of reference recordings, like, here’s a middle C on a vibraphone. I made a recording of just that middle C, and then I plugged it into this program [Ableton Live], and it uses that middle C to make an entire keyboard out of that vibraphone.”
Hello, what?? Of course there’s zero context in the rest of the story other than it appears that Atlas Sound (Cox) is assisting O in some capacity with the songs she’s written for the Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers-penned ‘Wild Things’ film, which is now scheduled for release sometime in 2009.
Jonze’s younger brother, Squeak E. Clean, told The Playlist that he, “helped out a little with ideas, but [Karen] is pretty much doing the whole thing [herself],” which still suggests that O wrote all the songs and people like Cox are helping her record and playing instruments on her self-penned tunes.
And yes, writers and editors will note the ‘Wild Things’ reference is in the Creative Loafing piece is an editorial parenthetical (Cox didn’t say it per say in that quote, but at some point he did tell them the information and they clarified this for the reader), but we’re going to have some faith in humanity (for once) and assume they know how to do their job [ed. even though they failed to notice they were sitting on a scoop].