We KNEW it was too good to be true. Yesterday we reported on an unconfirmed posting to the Elephant 6 Forums by Jeff Mangum, him of NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL potentially alluding to new recordings and a possible new NMH record.

No dice.

PITCHFORK spoke with Apples in Stereo frontman and Elephant 6 kingpin Robert Schneider, who confirms that the mystery post in the forums was NOT Mangum, but an elaborate hoax. Schneider posted the following on the E6Townhall forums today:

"dear friends--

i had not commented on this thread because i wanted to hear back from jeff mangum directly about it-- i sent jeff an email quoting the initial post on this thread yesterday, and he just replied:

'hello robert-i am sorry to inform you that this is not my post. could you please inform the good people on the e6 list that this is not my writing? thank you robert. much love-j'

this came directly to my email from jeff's email account-- the post attributed to him is 100% FALSO, sorry to bear the disappointing news-- it was a very beautifully written fake post!

you are all beautiful and brilliant kids, it would do the whole world a great deal of good if you took all this great energy and excitementyou have been passing around here, rolled it up with your anger and disappointment into a big wonderful pissed-off ball, and recorded a bunch of kickass songs!!! please go right now and make something special, do something great, retaliate against the mediocrity that engulfs us!!

don't just do it for me, or jeff, or elephant 6 (although it would please us all immensely) do it because the world needs it!!

love,
robert schneider"

Ergo, for all we know, the eccentric genius is STILL missing in action, or at clown college, or a born-again Christian, or hosting weird radio shows in small towns, or whatever rumour you'd like to believe.

All this proves, Jeff, is that people would REALLY like to hear more from you at some point. Whaddaya say?