We are half way through recording a new album. Now, I can't speak for the other half, but I hope to have something out this summer, either an LP or an EP. A 'delta psych' ode to New Orleans/Louisiana, of sorts.

songs titles include:

Vampires on Montegut

Rising Sun

Black is the New Black

Dead Horse

Bright Shadows

and more to be announced soon

BP

I've begun a Bipolaroid Facebook page.


Join our fan page
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bipolaroid/8299717263



& Group List
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=67234041759&ref=mf

Anti-Gravity February '09 issue

Take 1: Studio Notes

compiled by dan fox

*The funky throwback Bipolaroid is recording demo versions of a new album. Prodded for more info, Ben Glover had this to say about the recording process: "Currently recording demo versions with both the group and alone using everything from reel to reels, field recorders, laptops, and even an iphone. The last record went half a dozen times over the original budget, thousands and thousands of dollars, so I am taking a new approach with the new album and producing/engineering everything myself on a zero budget using only black magic and a deal with the devil. This is a departure record." Arriving where? I guess we'll just have to wait.



Also, this from Shellife:

By popular vote, Shellife 2008 Top 10 Albums:
---------------------------------------------
01 Bipolaroid - E(i)ther Or
02 Deerhunter - Microcastle
03 Secret Shine - All Of The Stars
04 Auburn Lull - Begin Civil Twilight
05 Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls
06 Aqua Nebula Oscillator - Under The Moon Of...
07 Why? - Alopecia
08 M83 - Saturdays=Youth
09 Magnetic Fields - Distortion
10 Twig - Life After Ridge
10 Bubblegum Lemonade - Doubleplusgood


Also, I should mention this spectacular psych blog:
Trip Inside This House
Top '08

#50-11 click on blog for more
#10. Darker My Love - 2
#09. Time And Space Machine - Volume One
#08. Ideal Free Distribution - Then We Were Older
#07. The Dandy Warhols - ...Earth To...
#06. Bipolaroid - E(i)ther Or
#05. the Black Hollies - Casting Shadows
#04. The Upsidedown - Human Destination
#03. Thomas Function - Celebration
#02. Future Clouds & Radar - Peoria
#01. Asteroid #4 - These Flowers Of Ours: A Treasury of Witchcraft and Devilry

Recently, I've been busy working with different musicians outside of Bipolaroid:

I've joined King Louie's Loose Diamonds, playing 12 string, lapsteel, backing vocals, and writing songs among other things. We are scheduled to play the Slabtown Bender festival in Portland February 6th. I've been wanting to collaborate with Louie for years, ever since I heard the Exploding Hearts 'Guitar Romantic'.

I'm also working on the latest Bipolaroid. New direction. Come to our show if you want a sneak peek.

Another fine review from our favorite psych zine across the pond:

http://www.terrascope.co.uk/Reviews/Rumbles_December08.htm

With song titles such as "Day in the Life of a Cloud", "karmic Engines" and "Father Time He Wastes It", I was really hoping that "E(I)ther or" the new album by Bipolaroid, was going to as good as the packaging suggested. Actually it was even finer, a blistering collection of psychedelic tunes, ranging from the surreal to the noisy to the plain weird. After the sprightly opener "Day in the Life…", the magnificent "Transparent make-believe" takes thing to a different level, some excellent guitar work letting the song fly high. After three more brilliant songs "Mouth of Lions" finishes side one in dramatic fashion, sounding like Leonard Cohen on acid, drifting flute and strings adding to the otherworldly atmosphere. Changing gear, side two springs into life with the stop/start garage guitar of "Father Time He Wastes it", before "Hallelujah" reveals a love of early Floyd. As with all great psych albums, the whimsical toy town pop of "Fell Right out of Bed" makes you smile whilst simultaneously confusing the ears with the joy of it all. Possibly my favourite track "The Golden Era" is a classic in the making, revelling in its sound, the slow and blissful middle passage creating just the right ambience, before the band kick back in with sonic vengeance. If this album had been released in the sixties it would command ridiculous prices on well known auction sites, don't let that happen now, get one while they are still available, you will not regret it for a moment.

Boston Phoenix has listed Bipolaroid as Louisiana's "best new band"

http://thephoenix.com/Supplements/2008/50States/Louisiana/

We appreciate their recognition of our group.

http://www.terrascope.co.uk/Reviews/Reviews_October08.htmBipolaroid

BIPOLAROID – E(I)THER OR
(LP/CD on Surreal But Kind Records www.bipolaroid.com )

One of the most welcome additions to the review pile just recently has been a second album from Bipolaroid. Their debut, 'Transparent Make-Believe', came out way back in 2003, and was spectacularly well received, especially hereabouts where a little psychedelic whimsy in the Tomorrow / Creation mould never goes amiss. After that, nothing. There was some worrying talk about over-enthusiastic American lawyers representing the owners of a certain photographic brand name threatening litigation – which to my mind is about as irrelevant as a chemical corporation accusing the band of having a name which sounds a bit too like the haemorrhoids their ointment claims to treat; then of course there was the fact that the band come from New Orleans, not known as the world's safest place to live in recent years.

But, all is well: Bipolaroid are back with a new album, singer/songwriter Ben Glover is as brilliant as ever and what I suspect (memory plays tricks sometimes) to be a new line-up of the band appears to be firing on all seven cylinders. And just to confuse matters, one of the finest songs on their new album – an argosy of lush swirling keyboards, breathy vocals and superbly soaring guitars – is entitled 'Transparent Make-believe'. Elsewhere, on the jaunty 'Cumbersome' in particular, the Syd-era Floyd worship is in full sail, the carefully observed Syd-esque drawled, druggy enunciations brilliantly emulated.

Curiously enough for what is a vocals-led album the highlight for me at least is the instrumental 'The Golden Era' which, a little like the opening track 'Day in the Life of a Raincloud', is a rollicking good progressive psych-rock romp with billowing clouds of Mellotron fills. Beautifully complex and yet enduringly catchy, it's a minor masterpiece all in itself.

The wonder of this album isn't so much its retro aesthetic – anyone interested in classic psychedelic pop will lap this up, and songs like 'Jane Jubilee' obviously owe a nod at least in the direction of Tomorrow and their 'Three Jolly Little Dwarfs', whilst 'Spiralling Staircase' and others mentioned above are all very Syd – but in glancing down at the credits. All songs written by Ben Glover. There's not a cover, obscure or otherwise, amongst them. It's so good to know people can still write, play and record genuinely great tripped-out psych pop records today without falling back on trying to prove how hip they are by including obscure John, David & The Mood B-sides. Fabulous. (Phil McMullen)

One of our favorite records stores now carries the new LP & CD:

www.aquariusrecords.org

It's been 4 years since we last heard from New Orleans' goofily monickered Bipolaroid. We went a little crazy for their acid drenched Pink Floyd worship. And we were actually wondering what happened to them not too long ago, when weirdly enough, we got a call from a lawyer who was representing Polaroid and were thinking about suing the band! Fortunately, it seems nothing came of that, especially since only a little later we got a brand new Bipolaroid album in the mail. And thankfully it takes up pretty much right where the last one left off.

Tripped out sixties style psychedelia, woozy and warbly and weary and druggy, whirring organs, shimmery guitar strum, wild drumming, soaring arrangements, swirling space-y effects everywhere, vocals that are a dead ringer for Syd Barrett's, often doused in delay or weird "Hurdy Gurdy Man" style FX, but like on the first record, Bipolaroid take their love of Floyd and supercharge it, adding a heaping dose of Hawkwind in places, creating an awesome space rock / sixties drug rock hybrid. Some of the songs are slow and slithery and sexy, with fluttery flutes, moody piano, and drawled mournful vox, others, like the opener, are wild and rollicking with the vocals nearly buried under a psychrock blowout, the drums all over the place, strings soaring in the background, and everything soaked in fuzzy organ, sounding all Deep and way Purple. The rest hover somewhere right in between, slipping effortlessly from strummed folky meander to propulsive trippy space groove and right back again. Any one into classic psychedelia and sixties prog will most likely dig this a lot. And Elephant 6 folks might get into this as well, since it shares much of the same retro aesthetic. The recording definitely sounds of the time, and even the songwriting would be tough to peg as modern, in fact, you could definitely pass this off as some reissued unearthed psych rarity. But none of that really matters, ultimately, this is just a killer tripped out psych pop record, and like the first one, we find ourselves going a little nuts and playing it over and over and over...

http://ventvox.com/?p=288

Hailing from New Orleans, this is not the sound of the Orleans parish. Owing a massive debt to early Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett, Ben Glover fronts the band Bipolaroid. Despite the band's gimmicky name, and slight jab at Elliott Smith's album of same name, Ben Glover and his cohorts deliver a tremendous psychedelic album full of swirly organs and guitars. Glover sings in a style that is very similar to Syd Barrett, but he is no mere imitator.

The album is full of highlights including the songs, "Mouth of Lions," which uses a watery reverb to excellent effect to wash over you with its dreaminess. Bipolaroid then mix it up with British pastoral sounds intermixed with a jumpy backbone in the song, "Fell Out Of Bed." Not everything is sleepy and lazy sounding, as instrumental "The Golden Era" introduces a jagged guitar and more rock oriented sound before spacing out. The album skitters out on one of the last tracks, "Spiralling Staircase" which uses too much drone machine and echo on Glover's vocals. After this one misstep, the album finishes suitably with a very cockney sounding "Jane Jubilee." The album is available on Surreal But Kind records or in MP3 form from Itunes and Amazon.com