Daytrotter has posted this video shot last year of an acoustic session in Salt Lake City.

Watch it here.

There are many scientists who believe, that it takes months for a new born child to establish a sense of individuality. The new born doesn’t make a distinction between themselves and their mother. It takes some time before a child understands that their mother is a separate entity. Upon making this discovery, initially, we are filled with a great anxiety. Of course, over time, we develop a real appreciation for our individuality, and all that it awards us. From the moment of our first “self” discovery, until our death, we develop, discard and rebuild our sense of identity countless times. We all do this, even boring people. Once we’ve established a comfortable self-sense of our current identity, we want to parade it. We want to campaign for it. We want the whole world to know, “look look, this is me, how you like me now?”. To project our self identity into the outer and, to amplify the howl of our self expression, we have many tools at our disposal; our art, our clothing and hair style, the way we talk…, and, for a lot of us, the objects that populate our living spaces. There are myriad vendors, attempting to contribute to our identity campaigns, creating rather dull and uninspiring products. Making the production of any new objects, at this point, almost seem criminal. In reaction to this, we unveil, the Skeletal Lamping Collection 08.

of Montreal has, from the beginning, taken great pains to always put a lot of thought and care into the art packaging for our records. We’ve always felt that the packaging was just as important as the music inside of it. We’ve worked within the constraints of conventional album packaging, and have tried to create something fantastically uncommon every time. Now, we find ourselves in the middle of an exciting epoch: A time, when new technology has shattered the conventional business model and has set a paradigm shift in motion. For some people in the music biz, this is terrifying. For us, it is a fucking miracle! While the kings are in a stupor, we are going to take full advantage of the changing guard.

The concept behind the Skeletal Lamping Collection is this: ideally, every object that you bring into your home, should feel exceptional to you. Otherwise, it just adds to the clutter and chaos of your life. We feel that there’s no reason to produce another object that just sits on a shelf. We only want to produce objects that have a function and that can be treasured for their singularness. Objects that can transform a room, bend the mind and inform your dreams. A CD has little value, as an object, and the conventional, right angle plagued CD packaging, we’ve been forced to endure forever, has nothing new to offer us either. That is why, instead of following the tired path of the past, we’ve decided, to release a table top floral beast, a lantern, a collection of wall decals, a stallion shaped print, a collection of pins, and a clothing and tote bag line as our album packaging instead. All art objects in the Skeletal Lamping Collection were designed by the Apollinaire Rave collective artists: Gemini Tactics and The Bee With Wheels.

One of the most exciting aspects of our escape from the trappings of conventional album packaging is that, upon buying Skeletal Lamping, a person is given the option to choose from a number of different items in the Skeletal Lamping Collection. Digital downloading of albums has brought upon an unfortunate situation, wherein, with your purchase, you only receive, at best, a thumbnail sized image of the album’s cover art, to look at on your mp3 player or computer. In our minds, this is unacceptable. We feel a person should not be punished for opting to purchase a record digitally, nor should one have to choose between, either, fantastic art object or ease of purchase.

We hope this idea catches on and, in the future, square CD packaging will be abandoned forever and only interesting art objects will fill record stores. We envision a time when you’ll be walking around your local record shop and be like, “What’s the new Radiohead album again? Oh yeah, a bonsai tree in the shape of a deformed goat, I see it over there.”

-of Montreal

The Skeletal Lamping Collection 08

of Montreal is featured in a two-page article in the new issue of Under the Radar.  You can see some scans in this Townhall thread.

Paste Magazine will feature of Montreal as the cover story for its November issue; there’s a (very brief) behind-the-scenes peek here.

If you missed it, back in June Paste ran this sneak preview of Skeletal Lamping.

The latest issue of Spin Magazine features a 5-page spread on of Montreal by Andy Battaglia, with a history of the band and a look at the prop-making which goes into each tour; plus lots of volleyball; and there’s eye-popping photos by Michael Schmelling, including a fabulous party in which Kevin is the dessert.  Videos soon to be here (apparently, though at the moment it’s a dead link).

UPDATE: The article and video can be found here.

The of Montreal cover of Parvati Khan/M.I.A.’s “Jimmy,” which Pitchfork let loose a while back, will be appearing on the upcoming charity compilation Give. Listen. Help. Volume 5.  It’s a two-disc set also featuring Radiohead, The Decemberists, Bloc Party, Ladytron, CSS, Oasis, and more, and you’ll find it at Urban Outfitters stores on October 15.  Proceeds go to the Pablove Foundation, and I encourage you to check out their website to see why it’s a good cause.  Track listing and more comp details are at Pitchfork.

Alas, Skeletal Lamping has been pushed back from a release date of October 7 to October 21.  Presumably you all ordered the lantern; now look what you’ve done.  But the good news is that there’s more of Montreal on the horizon: a 12″ remix LP from Diplo’s Mad Decent, out September 30, featuring two different remixes of “Id Engager,” plus the original version.  Order it here. And the always (id) engaging Jon Brion will be remixing “An Eluardian Instance” on an upcoming release on Polyvinyl.

Download the Mad Decent remix of “Id Engager” now at Pitchfork.

And have you heard that you ought to brush your teeth regularly? Of Montreal reminds all the viewers of Nick Jr.’s YO GABBA GABBA.

UPDATE: Polyvinyl will be giving a 10% discount on preorders due to the unexpected delay.

Skeletal Lamping has been pushed back by two weeks because of an error at the printer. We received the news last Friday and are moving the release date from October 7 to October 21. Thank you everyone for understanding and we will be including a 10% off coupon in all Skeletal Lamping pre-orders to make up for the delay. If you have any questions regarding an order or if you need to change your shipping information please contact us at mailorder@polyvinylrecords.com.

The Polyvinyl store is now accepting pre-orders for the various Skeletal Lamping packages, each in a unique design: you can take a look over here.  Posters and tee-shirts are also available, in addition to the 7 unique packages.

And, in case you missed it, the Skeletal Lamping track “Nonpareil of Favor” was made available for download via Pitchfork.