ANIMAL COLLECTIVE 2CD

The great thing about music and about occupying oneself with music is the fact, that the more music you hear and the more you learn about music, the more you get from music you hear[1]. Unfortunately, to most people music is just something to listen to on the radio, something that adds an auditive colour to their surroundings, like a piece of furniture or tapestry. And it can do that. Actually, music is really good in that. But that is just such a poor thing to do to an artform, even if it is just pop-music or chartsmusic, we are talking about. But people who have large record-collections won’t ever do that (normally). If their record-collections contain a large variety of styles then it is even further from their minds to treat music as something secondary or not important. Why am I writing all this down? Because I have wild guess, that Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist and Deaken, who are the current core-members of the Animal Collective, have really really large record collections. And accordingly large interest and knowledge about music, which they let drop into their own music each and every moment, making this double CD, which contains the first two albums of the Animal Collective, an amiable, illustrious trip through a wonderful collection of musical connotations, hints and influences, all mixed and fused into a jingly-jangly, ripped and stitched style of noise-folk that goes from songwriter meets electronica to space-cadet meets laptop-glitches. It’s a wild ride for sure at times.

Or imagine Black Dice trying to make folk-music, or Helios Creed trying his hand at electronic pop-music. Funnily, though, it works. Seems to me the basic structure is always a few chords on an old, rusty acoustic guitar and a vocal melody-line paired with epileptic field-drumming. The basic sound is always one that seems to be live, adding to the recording a more radiating, human shine, but also the remembrance of chaos and irrationality. The rest is open to anything, from bursts of pure noise to skewed background choirs to tribalism to a lot of psychedelic drugs and ever so forth. Which brings me to the point mentioned in the first paragraph – the members of the Animal Collective draw influences like someone else flips the pages of a foto-album. A little bit of mid-80ies industrial rhythms here, a little 70ies-Spacerock there, eclectic electronic soundscapes of the most current kind to basic modular rhythms of the late 80ies-Krautrock, some late Sixties / early Seventies rocksingers, to minimalism and field-recordings and high frequency disturbances and more and more and more. The connections beam in all directions like one large halo of light. The vast array of different sounds makes every comparison drawn right and wrong at the same time.

The politics behind the Animal Collective (and there is always a politic behind anything that calls itself a “collective”) is exactly that: to show that all of history is just one point in time: now. And that starting from this endlessly tiny point virtually everything is possible. There are no rules to what is allowed and what isn’t. Whatever seems right, is right. The main points of making music is to make it organic, whereas harmonious or understandable are of no artistic value. Hm, its good to have that written down once again. Overall, the members of the Animal Collective are not above living out their natural affinity for pop-music, but they drown it with their artistic approach of everything is allowed, nothing is forbidden.

[1] Thinking about it, it strikes me, that this is true for every artform and for almost everything else as well. Of course, to pursue an occupation you have to find an inner affinity to your object of desire. That is why making your hobby your profession is such a great treat.

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE Spirit they’re gone, spirit they’ve vanished / Danse Manatee 2CD, Fat Cat

The music of the Animal Collective is like nothing you have heard before and everything you have heard before all at the same time. It is psychedelic-folk-pop-space-rock-experimental-electronic-industrial-(post)modern-classical composition / improvisation with a little something thrown in from the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Nineties, this century and maybe some of those ahead as well. The Fat Cat-CD compiles their first and second full length albums, released in miniscule quantities somewhere in the last years. The animal collective seem to be more activists or explorers or experimentators than musicians, though they are definitely more musicians than leaders or agitators. They regard being atonal as being a different kind of tonal, and then go and search for some more ways to do things, but never seem to leave the path at the same time. They make The Flaming Lips look like Top Of The Pops.
The great thing about music and about occupying oneself with music is the fact, that the more music you hear and the more you learn about music, the more you get from music you hear[1]. Unfortunately, to most people music is just something to listen to on the radio, something that adds an auditive colour to their surroundings, like a piece of furniture or tapestry. And it can do that. Actually, music is really good in that. But that is just such a poor thing to do to an artform, even if it is just pop-music or chartsmusic, we are talking about. But people who have large record-collections won’t ever do that (normally). If their record-collections contain a large variety of styles then it is even further from their minds to treat music as something secondary or not important. Why am I writing all this down? Because I have wild guess, that Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist and Deaken, who are the current core-members of the Animal Collective, have really really large record collections. And accordingly large interest and knowledge about music, which they let drop into their own music each and every moment, making this double CD, which contains the first two albums of the Animal Collective, an amiable, illustrious trip through a wonderful collection of musical connotations, hints and influences, all mixed and fused into a jingly-jangly, ripped and stitched style of noise-folk that goes from songwriter meets electronica to space-cadet meets laptop-glitches. It’s a wild ride for sure at times. Or imagine Black Dice trying to make folk-music, or Helios Creed trying his hand at electronic pop-music. Funnily, though, it works. Seems to me the basic structure is always a few chords on an old, rusty acoustic guitar and a vocal melody-line paired with epileptic field-drumming. The basic sound is always one that seems to be live, adding to the recording a more radiating, human shine, but also the remembrance of chaos and irrationality. The rest is open to anything, from bursts of pure noise to skewed background choirs to tribalism to a lot of psychedelic drugs and ever so forth. Which brings me to the point mentioned in the first paragraph – the members of the Animal Collective draw influences like someone else flips the pages of a foto-album. A little bit of mid-80ies industrial rhythms here, a little 70ies-Spacerock there, eclectic electronic soundscapes of the most current kind to basic modular rhythms of the late 80ies-Krautrock, some late Sixties / early Seventies rocksingers, to minimalism and field-recordings and high frequency disturbances and more and more and more. The connections beam in all directions like one large halo of light. The vast array of different sounds makes every comparison drawn right and wrong at the same time. The politics behind the Animal Collective (and there is always a politic behind anything that calls itself a “collective”) is exactly that: to show that all of history is just one point in time: now. And that starting from this endlessly tiny point virtually everything is possible. There are no rules to what is allowed and what isn’t. Whatever seems right, is right. The main points of making music is to make it organic, whereas harmonious or understandable are of no artistic value. Hm, its good to have that written down once again. Overall, the members of the Animal Collective are not above living out their natural affinity for pop-music, but they drown it with their artistic approach of everything is allowed, nothing is forbidden. “Spirit they’re gone, spirit they’ve vanished” has been released in 2000 by the Animal Collective itself. “Danse Manatee” was released in a limited edition of 300 by Catsup Plate in 2001. Therefore it was high time that someone found a heart to release this record. Fat Cat did it and I am grateful, because now I can drowse myself in the otherworldliness of these skewed and weird songs, that give me so much to wonder and ponder about. In the meantime some more records have been released under analogue adverse circumstances, so what are the chances that I’ll ever find some more of the Animal Collective at my record dealer of choice. Well, this double-CD is more than enough to swallow first hand anyway. [1] Thinking about it, it strikes me, that this is true for every artform and for almost everything else as well. Of course, to pursue an occupation you have to find an inner affinity to your object of desire. That is why making your hobby your profession is such a great treat.

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE

2CD, Fat Cat