We know the one in white is Geologist, but which one did we just talk to?
It’s Wednesday morning and SUPERSWEET is gratingly hung-over after a night of gin-swilling debauchery in an East-London funk hole. Meanwhile, Animal Collective are bracing the Manchurian cold by huddling in the doorway of a tour van awaiting entry into the Manchester Club Academy. It seems both parties are on mutual suffering ground and take the time to bemoan the pathetic lack of snowfall in England. Portugal isn’t much better (where Noah lives with his wife, fashion designer Fernanda Pereira and their daughter Nadja) though the band are happy to be here despite potential frost bite.
Thank god for Merriweather Post Pavilion: an outdoor music venue in Columbia’s Symphony Woods, Maryland. Much like a wooded Neverland, its lush stretch of golf-green lawn is chaperoned by clusters of bushy trees. It might be nestled on an opposite hemisphere right now, but listening to Animal’ Collective’s album of the same name floats our imaginations straight to it in a big spaced-out hot air balloon colouring the skies in far-out sounds. We forget about cold fingers and banging heads – their music has actually soothed our headache. “Sweeeet!” Exclaims Panda Bear, aka a grinning Noah Lennox.
“I doubt we’ll actually get to play at Merriweather though. I think that space is a little big for us. It’s up in the Wembley stakes. But it’s got a grand, grassy feel to it. That’s one of the reasons we used it for the title of our album and for the impression of it on our music. Though I’ve never actually been there before.”
Wait. You’ve never actually been to the place that’s inspired your music?
“The other guys have. It’s not a place we really go to a lot. I get a lot of my song-writing experience through relationships; the relationship between our job and what we do. Being away from people that are close to us is difficult. The homesickness gets harder and harder.”
Lets think about the better times then. Lets remember all the tropical places you’ve toured in and the positive elements you’ve gained from those…
“Right! There are things about touring where I’ve learned more than I ever before. You get to see all these places and meet great people. It’s a process integral to our music. We’ve never toured to India [Note to self: Black Lips just got bottled there] but we did Japan a couple of times and Australia was awesome.”
That reminds us – AC sample of load of weird instruments when making music – any didgeridoos or skeletons harmed in the making of this record?
“We love using unusual instruments but they’re just too damn hard to get back on the plane! This album was mainly samples of different kinds of instruments. The rhythmic stuff we would often have a certain drum pattern and work with that. To make the stranger sounds we had a ping-pong ball in a bucket that made this kinda weird whirring sound.”
Really? That sounds exceptionally cool, thinks SUPERSWEET as we make a reach for the record player. Noah explains these samples have been processed so much it’s difficult to discern them. Realising that, we wonder how long it took to produce the entire album.
“We kinda go backwards with our music – we write songs, then we tour with them, so by the time we get back to the studio we’ve worked out exactly how we want the music to sound. For this album the process was shorter – only one year. The last two took two years each to toy with. A shorter time span worked to our advantage because the songs were still pretty fresh.”
Since AC are a collaborative set with an unusual fusion of conceptual sounds – a sound becoming more popular on the global Indie scene than their genesis ten year previously - we imagine the tons of posted samples they must receive; kids begging them to include their own warped mixes. Noah states they’re very much an insular group and only once in a while does someone sends something in good enough that they might use it.
After ten years of making tunes, these guys are a tight family set in their ways – an ironic counter boost to the freedom of their tracks, though it’s still an organised freedom after much re-working. The AC prolific generator will usually have several themes going at once though not a whole lotta’ conversation about what they actually want;
“I think we talk around ideas that don’t get fully realised. Merriweather became its own animal – from basic sketch to a super rich range of vocals and sounds with input from the rest of the band. It becomes ‘the thing that it will be’ as the process deepens.
“This time we had fun with bass and bass frequencies. We never had such a focus on that before. We didn’t want to do too many straight vocal harmonies, we wanted to try to do two main vocal parts working together but working off of each other – two totally different words or lyrics I guess I mean. I’m sure we’re not the first people to do that but er, we just wanted to try something new.”
Like Pink Floyd? Tell us you love Pink Floyd.
“I love Pink Floyd! Especially their early stuff. Those guys were super-super. Going up and doing their own thing you know? Music from all over the world and all types of communities all makes its way into us. Our music is changing all the time.”
What about Madonna?
“Yeh, I’m a Madonna fan. I don’t really listen to music a lot at home though. Most of what I hear comes from other people who play stuff for me.”
How would you describe your album artwork to Madonna?
“I’d say it represents the kinda sounds that are in our music - the little secrets that are hidden in the songs I like. “
And if Madonna wanted to know where the hell you sourced such a funky optical illusion from?
“That came from the Scientific American. Dave bought it on the way down to the studio where we were mixing. The feeling that we got looking at that…I like to think of it as magical wrapping paper for our record. I think a Japanese scientist did it.”
It’s fair to say that it meddles with your eyes as much as the tunes do – firing synapses in all awkwardly possible directions while opening a small portal to the sun as an optical ship of sonic exploration while rescuing a damsel in distress.
And breathe.
Noah is sniffing, and we imagine he’s sporting his Walt Disney-style Panda hat with little ear flaps for added protection. It seems we’re back in the real world, but we can always listen to 'In The Flowers' and 'My Girls' for some uplifting escapism, for as Panda Bear himself says, “this is the record for me - the most satisfying. It feels like such an easy thing to swallow”.
SUPERSWEET nods and gulps down a coffee flavoured paracetamol. It’s time to wave goodbye. “Thanks very much for interview,” he smiles. “I hope everybody’s doing well.”
Nice guy. No wonder his mum digs his tunes. We feel like better people having spoken with him on behalf of AC.
Words: Tiffany Tondut
Illustration: Zeroten