Black Foliage: Animation Music, Volume 1

Black Foliage: Animation Music, vol. 1 is the second and, currently, final album by the Olivia Tremor Control, although a third is in the process of being finalized following the death of Bill Doss in 2012. Just like the previous effort by the band, Music from the Unrealized Film Script Dusk at Cubist Castle, Black Foliage was released as a gatefold double album featuring artwork by Will Cullen Hart, one of the OTC’s two main contributors. This album saw a shift away from the catchier psychedelic pop of Cubist Castle and into deeper, more experimental territory. While there are analogous songs (the dark and sprawling Green Typewriters suite filled a whole vinyl side, whereas the 11-minute centerpiece “The Bark and Below It” took up two thirds of one), there are clearly different directions the stories travel in. They both follow the plots of nonexistent movies dreamed up by Doss and Hart, with Black Foliage focusing on its titular “animations”: five instrumental tracks based upon the bass line of the song “Black Foliage” (which was renamed “Itself” to distinguish it from the animations) that seek to invoke the image of an animation through their unique sound textures and sampling of other tracks on the album. Another hallmark of this album’s development relative to Cubist Castle is the massive expansion of the band; whereas Cubist Castle listed around 8 performers including the 4 in the OTC, Black Foliage’s liner notes listed eighteen performers (including Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum, notably on “I Have Been Floated” but also on the unreleased full version of “The Sky is a Harpsichord Canvas”) across the album’s 27 tracks. Also utilized were “dream tapes” – the Olivia Tremor Control had requested that their fans send in tapes of them describing their dreams to be used in upcoming projects. These tapes would reappear in the album “The Late Music” by Olivia Tremor Control pseudonym The Black Swan Network, and some would reappear in this album, most noticeably in the songs “Combinations 2” and “Hilltop Procession (Momentum Gaining)”.

In 2011, Black Foliage was remastered by Chunklet Magazine with a dropcard good for the download of 20 rare or unreleased tracks.