Josephine Collective posts some new, raw material online

It’s been more than a year since Josephine Collective released a full-length album on Warner Bros. Since then, the band has parted ways with the major label and appears to possibly be dropping the Collective from its name, as well. Along the lines of change, a “mixtape” that the band recently posted online suggests that whatever music comes next in the canon could be a departure from the schizo, emo-pop that the Johnson County boys are currently known for.

Guitarist Martin Swank offered the following explanation/introduction for the studio experimentation in a blog entry on MySpace:

since we have been more or less keeping to ourselves lately, ie not touring or releasing anything, i decided to assemble some noise we’ve made in the last month or two into a long mixtape style file. it’s no overproduced album, or even produced anything, as you will find out. it’s just fun, funny and maybe a little annoying.

you can download it, or stream it, as individual diddies, or one long beast.

hopefully there will be more to come. and soon.

You can stream the “songs” in pieces or all as one big file. I opted for the latter but didn’t get through the whole thing, which starts out with a sample(?) of a man’s voice ranting about growing bombs like flowers. (I put the question mark behind sample because the ramble is a little reminiscent of the kinds of things JoCo frontman Dylan Teague Devoe has been known to post on MySpace.) From there, the track turns into ambient tones and spacey, cinematic sounds.