May 2011
41 posts
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Animal Collective - Derek (Live at Grrrnd Zero, October 25, 2007)
“Well Nadja, who’s five, has just never cared about my music, has always totally thought it was just boring. I tried a few times, then I just gave up. But my son, who’s 11 months, the second you put on music his ears perk up, and he’s super into it. So, I’m totally ready to unleash the beast on him.”
—Noah Lennox.
“
To me [Person Pitch] was a big mess of sound, it was like a big soup that I was hoping would swim around your ears or your head or something like that. Nothing really stuck out too much, everything was just kind of floating around in this world… .
The focus of what I wanted to do with the new songs was essentially take that soup of sound and just clench it in your fist, just compress it really intensely to get short little songs. I was really inspired by this album called Donuts by J Dilla. The speed at which he’ll move from one thing to the next is really fast.
” —Noah Lennoxhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pTMSOb3D4U
Don't you just love him all talkative. :)
He’s pretty great. And thanks for the tip.
“Even though I wanted to do odd forms of songs, I feel like the songs themselves are far more obvious this time round. Part of that’s to do with the speed the song comes across, it’s not like you have to wait twelve minutes as the song goes from one part to the next, so it’s easier to digest in that way. But also the mix helps. Having the principal elements of the song upfront helps people to understand what’s going on a little bit more.”
—Noah Lennox, on Tomboy vs. Person Pitch
The 10 Best Moments of All Tomorrow's Parties →
spin.com
BEST BAND REINVENTION: ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
In addition to curating three days of music and film, and even programming two on-site television stations (not to mention a book club), Animal Collective headlined two of the three nights. And when they took the stage on Saturday, the band looked different from their last appearances. In fact, they looked like a normal band. Rather than the Kraftwerkian workstations from their Merriweather tour, AnCo has Deakin back in the fold, playing guitar and singing, and Panda Bear back behind a full drum kit (instead of manning a drum machine), something fans haven’t seen since the Here Comes the Indian era. The new material — no less than 10 fresh tracks — flashed polyrhythmic foundations and traces of dubstep, tropical rhythms, and even salsa flavors, which propelled songs that grew more melodically and lyrically dense. While the band also worked in the ecstatic blasts of “Brother Sport” and “Summertime Clothes,” as well as Feels standout “Did You See the Words,” they defied crowd expectations throughout the night.
Tomboy
Panda Bear
Panda Bear - Tomboy
“Sometimes we’ll do big shows, or something like Coachella, and there’s definitely that feeling of confusion, or confoundment, in the air. I don’t necessarily see that as a negative. I’ve been to shows where I’ve felt perplexed as to what is being performed, and there’s something really exciting about that mystery. Trying to figure out exactly where somebody is coming from can be just as exciting as a performance where you know and love every song. The two sides of the spectrum are equally exciting to me, so you hope that’s the same for people in the audience.”
—Noah Lennox.
“
“Bros” was about the whole life I left behind in America because I had just moved to Portugal. It’s not just about friends, but family and about trying to negotiate those relationships and hold onto the things I really wanted to hold onto. And not only other people but myself too, in terms of who I was in America, not that I totally changed, but my identity became a little bit different after going to Portugal, I didn’t know anybody in Lisbon. “Bros” is about those things.
Like the Person Pitch song “Carrots” is a reference to what they call red-haired people in Portugal. There aren’t many so they really stick out, so I’m talking about myself being like a foreigner [in Lisbon] because it’s pretty obvious I stick out and I’m not a native.
” —Noah Lennox
Wayne Coyne Hints at Panda Bear Collaboration →
esquire.com
What we’re gonna ask [Jimmy Page] to do is these soundtracks. We’re gonna do something with Panda Bear, too.
“It’s more about creating an atmosphere or a sound that feels finished, or feels like it takes my attention. I don’t feel the need to throw a bunch of stuff on top just for the sake of it, it’s more about getting my mind to a place where I’m not really thinking about anything else when I’m listening to the song. Usually the way I make songs is by listening to this thing over and over again, gradually putting little pieces in, sounds here and there, and tweaking them until eventually I reach a listening point where I can close my eyes and the song will pass without me really thinking about anything. That point where I’m not thinking that a specific part is weak, and distracts me because it doesn’t sound so good.”
—Noah Lennox, on layering sounds.
“Another thing is that I like to think about music— it’s weird to say it— as a sport. But only in terms of golf, as far as the course being music and me being the golfer. So it’s competitive but only with yourself. With the last one doing well, it made it a challenge to feel like I was improving in some way.”
—Noah Lennox, on following Person Pitch.
Listen
Zomby - Things Fall Apart (Featuring Panda Bear)
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Panda Bear - Daily Routine (Live at Governors Island 2010)
“That was the stepping-stone for all the Tomboy songs. That was the one song that I guess is sort of strange because it sticks out like a sore thumb on that album. It was the song that I came back to a lot, and was always in my head, even long after the album was over. It was the song that I always wanted to play live. There was something almost embarrassing about the lyrical content of it that I liked. It felt really exposed in a way that was really uncomfortable but there was a power to it that I really liked. I wanted to keep going in that direction both lyrically and as far as it being a guitar song.”
—Noah Lennox on “Ponytail.”
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Yeah I sort of had a totally different way of working this time, just due to the other forces in my life as far as having a family and a wife who’s working all the time… and children. On Person Pitch or anything I had worked on before then it was always like if I felt like doing something whether it was eight in the morning or two in the morning, I would just kind of go there and do it. I was kind of forced to have sort of this regimented routine or something like that [for Tomboy].
Eventually what I did with it, because there’s a lot of time were I feel like I’m not in the mood to do something creative and I’m not going to come up with anything that I think is really any good, so usually what I do with that time which is a good… I don’t know… three quarters of the week or something… I like to kind of just work on something else, like just play the guitar or play with the sequencer to try to figure out things I can do with that. One of the machines that I got, the thing that I affected the guitar with and that made all the sequences is this super complicated piece of equipment [Korg M3]. So a lot of the times I’d just be kind of going through the manual to try and figure out the little things that I can do with it. Ways of sneaking it with other things, which is weird.
I felt like if I was in there in the studio working on something it was all leading somewhere, you know what I mean. It was all work leading to some kind of ultimate goal and before this record it was always just here and there and little bits.
” —Noah Lennox, on recording Tomboy.