In a 1906 essay, Ernst Jentsch describes someone to whom something “uncanny” happens to as not “at home” or disoriented. He defines the word as “doubts whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might be, in fact animate." Having spent the better part of the past two years on the road with the likes of The Racontuers, The Flaming Lips, Black Mountain and Ted Leo, BIRDS OF AVALON are no strangers to the sense of unsettlement that accompanies the constant traveler. BIRDS OF AVALON explore this concept of confusion with Uncanny Valley, by layering psychedelic dissonance atop lyrical themes of fugitives in the computer age, underground-dwelling children replaced by doppelgangers, and sensations of unreality.
Raleigh NC’s BIRDS OF AVALON was formed after newly-wed guitarists, Paul Siler (co-owner of famed Raleigh indie hangout, King’s Barcade) and Cheetie Kumar, split from The Cherry Valence to join forces with vocalist, Craig Tilley, and avid 4-tracker, David Mueller. They later enlisted their favorite Chapel Hill drummer and mural artist, Scott Nurkin and quickly made a name for themselves with relentless touring in support of their ’07 debut, Bazaar Bazaar, and last year’s follow-up EP, Outer Upper Inner.
BIRDS OF AVALON wrote and recorded almost two-dozen new songs during a six-month break from touring. In January, they wrapped up a more elaborate record at Mitch Easter’s Fidelitorium Studio. Following the session, the band found itself back home wanting to write and record additional material instead of getting back on the road as they usually would. After Easter, the famed producer (REM, Wilco, Pavement), generously offer to lend his 3M tape machine and some old used tape, the band borrowed the remaining equipment from friends around town and proceeded to record a second album in their basement-rehearsal space which was transformed within days to a makeshift studio.
Like assembly line workers, the band worked quickly and limited themselves to using only 15 tracks on the 16-track tape machine to try and capture the spontaneous emersion of new material. Cheetie Kumar, a Bronx transplant via India where she lived until she was 8, handled most of the engineering duties before she and Easter mixed the record down from 2” to 1/4” tape.
The band dubbed these recordings Uncanny Valley, after a theory which was introduced by Japanese roboticist, Masahiro Mori, in 1970 to describe the phenomena by which human beings become more unsettled by robots or other human facsimiles in direct proportion to how lifelike they appear. This sense of uncomfortable strangeness can sometimes develop between the creator and what they create - a sudden vertigo that arises as, in this case, a song takes on a life of it’s own. With Uncanny Valley, BIRDS OF AVALON embrace this sensation by capturing new material as it arises, taking advantage of analog limitations in today’s digital recording age.
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