The interest for this blog stemmed from my interest in Julian Koster's involvement with the band Neutral Milk Hotel. In the scope of the band, Lead Singer Jeff Mangum is the big honcho who gets most of the press. But, Koster provided the weird nuances that made Neutral Milk Hotel really stand out, like the ghostly notes of the singing saw that are incorporated into so many songs on In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. The more you look into his life, it only gets more interesting. Koster lives a very a-typical life for a former member of a wildly popular indie band. He does apartment tours, Christmas caroling and constructed his own traveling tent to set up in different places for his Traveling Imaginary Tour.

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This website contains a brief biography of Koster, outlining the bands he has been a part of over the years and the many musical projects he has participated in. It also contains an analysis of the media and discourse surrounding Koster online. For this section, I used the University of Cincinnati’s library database to track down articles that have been written about Koster. I also did some extensive Google searching (impressive — no?) to find content for this piece. After the discourse analysis, you will find a think piece which I wrote to add to the discourse about Koster. For this piece, I dipped into my knowledge of Shintoism and related it to Koster’s touring methodology.

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The purpose of this research was to take an in-depth look at the life of a musician who I found really interesting. I also hoped to be able to provide my research to any fans who were curious about knowing more about him. I think my favorite findings from this research were all of the weird interactions Koster has with fans. At one point in his career, he ended a show by passing out noisemakers, pots, and pans to the crowd—then led them in an impromptu parade through New York City.

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In the Portfolio section of this website, you will find the major pieces of writing related to Koster: the Biography, the Genre and Discourse Analysis, the Praxis, and the Annotated Bibliography. Clicking any of these articles will bring you to a separate page with the full piece, as well as a button at the bottom of the page that says “Word Doc.” Clicking that button will let you access the full, MLA-formatted pieces listed on this site.

(The Annotated Bibliography section is strictly a link to a Word Doc. It won’t take you to a separate page.)

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After doing this research, my interest in this topic lies mostly in Koster’s newest project  — The Orbiting Human Circus podcast. It is sort of the amalgamation of his career, up to this point. It takes all of his incredible music abilities that he’s displayed through Neutral Milk Hotel, his own band The Music Tapes, and many other features with bands like Olivia Tremor Control, and it smashes them together with his masterful storytelling abilities. Anyone who had seen a live Koster show knows that a lot of his act is storytelling, and his album, 2nd Imaginary Symphony for Cloudmaking, is an hour-long audio drama. So, this mashup in the form of a podcast was bound to happen. And it’s being produced by the creators of Welcome to the Nightvale. I think it is going to become, at least, a cult phenomenon.

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You can find out more about me, the author, in the Author section. You'll also find my Discussion Board posts from class, here.