Bradford James Cox aka Atlas Sound is the lead singer of the Atlanta, GA band, Deerhunter. He named himself Atlas Sound after the manufacturers of the tape machine. Also on his resume is a guest appearance where he played a few tracks on Black Lips second album, We did not know the forest spirit made the flowers grow (2004).
Cox was born with a condition called Marfan's Syndrome. The geeky side of me has always secretly wanted to write about Cox because the disease has always been so fascinating to me in my line of work doing echocardiograms - ultrasounds of the heart. Marfan's is an inherited congenital disease in which the connective tissue's chemical makeup is abnormal. It effects bones, muscles, ligaments and skeletal structures. People with Marfan's tend to be tall, skinny, have long arms and legs, caved-in chest, tapered fingers, curvature of the spine, long faces, elf-like pointy ears, and eye problems. Some of the most life threatening illnesses of people with Marfan's occur in the heart. The most common cause of death in people with Marfan's is something called an aortic dissection. Over time, the ascending aorta (distal to the aortic valve) can dilate in Marfan's patients. People with dilated aortas are told to avoid contact sports because a traumatic blow to the chest could cause a dissection. They are told to also avoid weight lifting and pregnancy for women. Obviously Cox has "avoided" the weight lifting. The added blood pressing on the aortic wall makes them more prone to get a dissection. It truly is as bad as it sounds. The pressure hitting the aortic wall, thins the wall out then creates a tear that splits open (dissects) the intimal (inside) lining of the artery wall. This leads to them having two lumens ("false lumen" and "true lumen"- regular artery) getting blood flow now instead of one (regular artery). The blood flow is then bidirectional, your "true" artery getting one direction of flow then the "false lumen" getting another direction of flow that makes the aorta split or tear further. Patients that have this have severe back and chest pain and call it a "ripping or tearing" feeling. Marfan's patients can have leaky mitral and aortic valves as well, but those gradually get worse and the severity can be monitored with doctor's visits to determine if the person needs a valve replacement.
Animal Collective's Noah "Panda Bear" Lennox and Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier will also be on Atlas Sound's Logos (October 20, 2009). The collaboration between Cox and Lennox started with a common music lover game: taking turns playing IPod DJ on a tour bus. One of them played, "What am I Going to Do" by the Dovers. Cox mentioned to Lennox that some one should sample the catchy riff in the song. Lennox definitely agreed and taught Cox some things about sampling and matching up beats thus creating the collaboration for the song, "Walkabout." "Almost everything you hear on the album is a first take. This makes it almost like a live album where a band sets up in a studio and just rolls tape." - Cox.
