It was a nice surprise to open up the New York Times Sunday Magazine and see a gigantic feature story on St. Vincent, Final Fantasy and Panda Bear. The piece, by John Wray, is all about one person bands.

Owen Pallett — known to his fans as the singer, songwriter, violinist, pianist, bassist, harpsichordist, engineer and everything else that makes up the indie-rock one-man band Final Fantasy — was trying to play his violin through five amplifiers at once. Effects pedals, instrument cables, patch cords and microphone stands took up most of the space, radiating out from the laptop and sound card that Pallett was fussing over, and an ominous hum filled the room. The amps were arranged in a loose semicircle, vaguely reminiscent of Stonehenge: Pallett spent the day before writing a computer program to coordinate the various outputs, and the impression he made now was less that of an up-and-coming rock star than of a crackpot inventor, à la Nikola Tesla, sequestered in his workshop.

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