Labradford

Richmond

Mark Nelson came to Richmond to study at Virginia Commonwealth University; Carter Brown had studied organ there, and Labradford was his first band. They began as a duo in the early 1990s, Nelson on guitars and tape loops and murmured vocals, Brown on a stack of old analog synthesizers, a Memorymoog, a Polymoog, a vocoder and Moog bass pedals. A 1997 fanzine said the name came from the Louisville basketball player LaBradford Smith.

In spring 1993 Joel Leoschke and Bruce Adams, who worked at a Chicago distributor, founded Kranky specifically to put out the duo's first album. Prazision LP appeared that October as krank 001, in fewer than a thousand hand-numbered copies. The Chicago Tribune's Greg Kot called it trance rock at its finest, outdated synthesizers making pools of dread and beauty.

The trio

The bassist Robert Donne, who had played in the hard rock band Breadwinner, joined for A Stable Reference (1995), almost entirely without vocals; Trouser Press said he gave them a solid floor. They toured America and Britain, recorded two sessions for John Peel, and released singles on Merge and Stereolab's Duophonic label. The self-titled third album (1996), opening with Phantom Channel Crossing, added violin and percussion; Mi Media Naranja (1997), its tracks titled with single letters, added strings, Rhodes and slide guitar, and FACT later ranked it among the best post-rock albums ever made.

In 1999 they curated a Festival of Drifting at the Union Chapel in London, released E Luxo So, whose track titles spell out its credits, and toured North America with Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Fixed::Context (2001), recorded by Steve Albini in Chicago, has an eighteen-minute opener; Pitchfork said it rewarded repeated listening, and The Guardian heard Duane Eddy playing the Twin Peaks theme.

Since

They have never formally split, but have released nothing since 2001. Nelson moved to Chicago and records as Pan American. Donne played with Adam Wiltzie of Stars of the Lid as Aix Em Klemm and with Spokane and Gregor Samsa, and in 2014 he and Nelson formed Anjou with the percussionist Steven Hess. Treble called Labradford a highly underrated band with a sound hard to categorize. Kranky reissued Prazision for its twentieth anniversary, and a track from E Luxo So turned up on the soundtrack of The Young Pope.