Another great early streaming offer from NPR. Go.

“Lucky 1” by Avey Tare

I’m excited about this album. And I’m shocked how approachable this tune is… meaning it isn’t playing in reverse. 

(Source: pitchforkmedia.com)

fuckyeahpandabear:

Panda Bear in his Lisbon studio where he made Person Pitch and Tomboy

via

Avey Tare’s Down There will be available on 10/26/2010 from Paw Tracks.

1) Laughing Hieroglyphic
2) 3 Umbrellas
3) Oliver Twist
4) Glass Bottom Boat
5) Ghost of Books
6) Cemeteries
7) Heads of Hammock
8) Heather in the Hospital
9) Lucky 1

Photo by @erictetuana.

Live pictures of Animal Collective’s set at the Guggenheim museum are available here.

For more information, go here.

Hopefully we’ll get an audio recording of these performances.

I almost literally cannot wait until I can watch an hour and a half of this.

EDIT: Also, remember that film they made Karl watch in room 23 on LOST? This looks just like that. I love it.

:

#10: Animal Collective, “What Would I Want? Sky” (2009)

Download.

I began the decade listening to Radiohead, a band that a great many have claimed to hold the key to the sound of our era; Kid A (as I mentioned before) has been proclaimed the Rosetta stone to the sonic landscape of the ‘aughts with its cold, lifeless blips and hiccups superimposed with occasionally sparse but always entrancing human elements.

Now, with 2010 approaching, I cannot help but feel that way about Animal Collective. If you haven’t been living under a rock, you’ve been hearing non-stop about Animal Collective from everybody, as they have been an internet favorite and an all-around divining rod for hip, forward-thinking indie-rock since they released Merriweather Post Pavillion early this year; if you happen to keep your ear to the emerging popular music scene, you probably heard about Animal Collective from their previous “popular” releases, the rock-oriented Feels, or the glistening (literally), futuristic Strawberry Jam; if you’re cooler than the room, than perhaps you’ve been a fan since their early decade work, culminating in the wonderful psych-folk infused Sung Tongs. But regardless whether you’ve been playing “My Girls” non-stop, or prefer the, er, trickier Danse Manatee (a record described by band member Brian “Geologist” Weitz as an experiment “in extreme frequencies, both low and high,and how they occupied space in the room and moved around in your heads”), you’ve probably noticed Animal Collective on the radar, in a big way, this year.

Which brings us to “What Would I Want? Sky”. “WWIW?S” had been road-tested at live shows throughout 2009 and made its recorded debut on the band’s ceremonial post-LP EP release Fall Be Kind. The whole EP is great, but “WWIW?S” stands out as a track that is instantly likable, regardless of almost any musical bias. Gone is much of the effects processing from the voice and snare hit, leaving a song with a clear melody, steady—albeit staggered—rhythm, and an immediately pleasing and catchy tune. For the AC purists: a three minute-plus jam starts the song, blowing breezily into the main section of the song, which utilizes in a rather creative way a vocal sample from the Grateful Dead song “Unbroken Chain”. All in all, “WWIW?S” is an example of Animal Collective at (arguably) its creative and commercial peak, as well as an example of how largely electronic music can be made to sound warm, inviting, and human, in a way that (albeit intentionally) Kid A doesn’t always achieve. This is mainstream, organic electronic music for the next decade and, well, I’m just fine with that.

Thanks for putting up with my rambling! The new year will bring—I promise—more real news and journalism, hopefully. I’ll see you all in 2010. -BC

From left to right, Animal Collective’s Brian Weitz, David Portner and Noah Lennox.

Those desperate for a listen to Animal Collective’s upcoming Fall Be Kind were treated to the first public snippets of the EP’s five songs in the past few days, as first Amazon UK, and then the Amazon US site for the release each posted different 30 second samples of the songs.

The EP will be available for Digital Download on November 23rd, and pre-orders for the CD and 12” single are being taken at the Domino Records website. Buzz about whether the EP will leak prior to the 11/23 release date has been abundant on internet message boards, and for die-hard AC fans the thirty-second clips have provided a much-needed, if fleeting, glimpse at the new release, having been rumored for months to be the Brothersport EP (note: Brothersport was recently released on 10” through Domino, backed with “Bleeding,” a live variation on Fall Be Kind’s “Bleed.”)

Adhering to the unwritten rules of intense internet fandom, devotees have already listened (presumably over and over, of which I am also guilty) to the short clips, and are already weighing in. The response has run the gambit from blind praise (one user on a devoted AC message board opined that “I Think I can” has the potential to “change the way we think about music”) to appropriately hip cynicism (yet another user on the same message board expressed distaste at Amazon US’s 30 second clip of “What Would I Want? Sky” for the “[lack of] reverb on the vocals and very cheesy handclaps…”).

With the band receiving significant press in recent months for utilizing the first legally obtained Grateful Dead sample (in Fall Be Kind’s “What Would I Want? Sky”), and a recently released video for Merriweather’s “In the Flowers,” Animal Collective seems to be closing the book on 2009 with the same kind of whirlwind with which they opened it, and with the pending release of the band’s much awaited “visual album” with collaborate Danny Perez it would seem as though AC are trying to give fans enough material to hold them over while the band takes an indefinite break next year (according to AC’s David Portner in a recent Pitchfork interview). But I wouldn’t count on it.

Coming soon: substance!