A conversation about Atlas Sound (aka Bradford Cox) begins and ends with Marfan Syndrome. But the beginning (he has it, it’s a genetic disorder of the connective tissue, it SUCKS) and the ending (the music he makes) are two points that are gloriously far apart. The distance is measured by the power of raw talent to create something beautiful out of misery.

But forget insipid expressions of awe. That’s the last thing this 27-year-old, self-described “leader of awkward people” would want. So, yeah, he spent a lot of time alone and in the hospital. By 10, he was recording stream-of-consciousness tracks on the family’s Karaoke machine. He dropped out of high school. His parents divorced. And he’d made 500 cassette tapes of material — which he drew on to form, in 2001, the much-praised experimental/psych-rock garage band, Deerhunter.

He went solo under the name Atlas Sound (the brand of tapes he’s used since childhood), as a side project from the band. His debut, Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel, was a collection of washed-out, scrubbed-down intimate bedroom recordings; the lyrics were frequently about disease. “Quarantine” depicts a childhood in hospitals: “Quarantined and kept / so far away / from my friends…I’m waiting to be changed,” Cox sings over blippy synths that could be stand-ins for dripping IVs against the soft, padded music of hospital air.

His second album, 2009’s Logos is much more outlandish, eclectic, and happily communal — much of it recorded while on tour with Deerhunter. The prickly “Walkabout” samples a Dovers’ song (“What Am I Going To Do”) — his tour mate, Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox, taught him to sample. Another track features Sasha Vine (of Sian Alice Group) playing a violin improvisation recorded at a Brighton gig. Onstage he’s a gangly 6′ 4″ and sometimes in a dress. If he was lonely before, he’s certainly not shy now: “If you have something that one person would consider a handicap, I would say, like, just try to make it explode, you know?”

Layered samples and spare vocals build in atmospheric songs that are lifted further by distorted guitar.  Bradford Cox has a voice that sighs and groans creating tension in each song’s story.