In May 2011, Foxygen’s Sam France and Jonathan Rado nervously handed off a CD-R of their homemade miniopus ‘Take The Kids Off Broadway’ to producer and visionary Richard Swift after his performance in a Lower East Side club. The duo, who had just mixed and burned the disc that very night, had been devotees of Swift’s outsiderpop oeuvre since high school, when they first began recording their own pubescent forays into oddball rock ‘n’ roll (at least a dozen records were finished before they graduated high school). Foxygen left the venue that night unsure whether Swift would truly listen or sling the disc into a dumpster on his way out. In fact, Swift flipped for Foxygen’s bugged out, esoteric majesty and called upon them immediately to say as much.

Eight months later, Foxygen was holed up for a week-long recording session at Swift’s neo-legendary National Freedom studio, creating what has become ‘We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors Of Peace & Magic’, a precocious and cocksure joyride across California psychedelia with a burning, bursting punk rock engine.

The songs were written in an inspired fury just after ‘Take The Kids…’ was complete, pouring from their hands and mouths. Foxygen believe that each song was a message of peace delivered from cosmic beings who used France and Rado as their messenger vessels.

Bubbling beneath their supreme melodic instincts, there’s a wild, nervy energy and a raw musicianship that makes Foxygen incapable of doing anything exactly straight. They somehow pack a host of musical left turns, lyrical non sequiturs and decades-spanning bridges into industry preferred 3 – 4 minute gems that are at both reinvention and memorial.