Jeff Mangum's Bulgarian Field Work

I am a foreigner and I am free. Free to wander the streets, my shoes kick up dust as my feet begin to shake along the cobble-stoned walkways to the vibrating waves of women voices and hand drums pummeled with fists. Wrapping around corners I am met by armies of brass horns that aim their war cries in my direction. I am a wanted foreigner, wanted by the foreign melodies and harmonies of the villages of my ancestors. As I turn, it somehow seems that their ghosts are calling me back through the echoing sounds that fill this usually slow moving city. Changing directions, I run to the children singing, hooting, and yelping in the town square to the beat of my racing heart. Ba-dada-boom. Ba-dada-boom.

I can’t escape Jeff Mangum’s work. Hardly a week goes by where I don’t take the time to listen to some sound he has created, be it his crunched up schoolboy scream, his frantic strum, or his love affair with the girl whose diary chronicled one of the most horrific accounts of the capabilities of our human evil. Jeff has taken us into the depths of his heart and mind allowing us to delve into his consciousness and observe his fears and tragedies, his loves and his dreams. Yet of all that Jeff has taken part in, nothing has had the effect of walking alongside him as you both enjoy the music that has had such a strong effect on him over the years.

In August of 2000, Jeff had the opportunity to do some field work to record his experience over a three day period at the Koprivstitsa Festival in Bulgaria. These recordings would be mended together upon his return to give the experience as if the listener had actually attended the eastern folk festival. What resulted is a single, 35-minute track known as Volume #1 of the Orange Twin Field Works, a live recording that is actually alive with movements and observations that I have never found in the stale tape-recorded shows of some of our favorite bootlegs.

Samples of the Field Recordings:
[mp3] Jeff Mangum (Field Works) – Bulgaria #1
[mp3] Jeff Mangum (Field Works) – Bulgaria #2
Buy Volume #1 of the Orange Twin Field Recordings here.

A few people were looking for "My Dream Girl Don't Exist" so I decided to scrounge up my copy for those few seekers of tracks outside of Aeroplane and Avery Island
BONUS [mp3] Jeff Mangum – Two Headed Boy Part Two (Live)
BONUS [mp3] Jeff Mangum – My Dream Girl Don’t Exist (Live)