Monday, 8 February 2016

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE: “WE’VE BEEN AROUND LONGER THAN MOST OF MY FAVOURITE BANDS”

“I like the Ankylosaurus,” announces Animal Collective’s Geologist, matter of factly. “It’s got armour and a club tail, with a very square head, and spikes. I know so many dinosaurs,” Brian Weitz goes on, proudly. “I have to read this book called Dinopedia every night to my son.”

From the glitching radio static of previous album ‘Centipede Hz.’ to humid, undergrowth-shaking Jurassic pop; it’s just another casual step in the wildly varied, never-slowing universe of Animal Collective. Recorded in a Hollywood studio, under the glare of muted dinosaur documentaries playing on loop, ‘Painting With’ takes its name from sloshing paintbrushes and modge-podged collages. Sonically, Animal Collective were thinking about Cubism, constantly targeting the heart of a song before even trying to splice and abstract things. Panda Bear, Geologist and Avey Tare wanted to write a record with all of the immediacy of The Ramones, but diced up, rearranged, and viewed through a physic-defying prism. The Ramones connection, though important, was just a starting point. “It’s not like we wrote songs about sniffing glue,” jokes Geologist.

“There was this idea of wanting to do something with short songs, with a homogenous energy to the record,” says Noah Lennox, otherwise known as Panda Bear. “Something where the first song revs up the engine, and it kind of just cruises after that. We didn’t want to throw in some ethereal moment. We wanted to do something that blasted away the whole time.”

Chasing a “70s punchiness” and a crisp sound, ‘Painting With’ is sparser than previous Animal Collective records. With the layers of meticulous fuzz-covered samples stripped right back, every element operates in full view, like a transparent Swatch-watch. West Coast whistles cruise smoothly down the sprawling boulevards of ‘Bagels in Kiev’, while lead single ‘FloriDada’ bounces happily along, trailing gargled lyrics in its pogoing wake.

Resource: http://diymag.com

No comments:

Post a Comment