Centipede Hz is the tenth full length Animal Collective album following the
widely celebrated Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009) and also the first since
Strawberry Jam (2007) to feature all four original band members: Avey Tare,
Panda Bear, Geologist and Deakin. As the album’s opening bars of drum crashes
and radio interference on ‘Moonjock’ immediately make clear, having returned
as a four piece, Animal Collective have made their most widescreen and fully
realized music to date.
Regrouping as a four piece Animal Collective reconvened in their native
Baltimore in January-March 2011 to write material for Centipede Hz with a
further session later in the year. Rather than swapping ideas over the internet
and file-sharing Animal Collective were, for the first time in many years,
exchanging ideas in the same room by playing live instruments. As a result
Panda Bear returned to playing a sit-down drum kit for the first time since Here
Comes The Indian (2003) and Geologist began playing live keyboards again.
Along with using some of the samplers and sequencers with which they had
previously been writing, the sound of Centipede Hz draws on the dynamics and
energy of Animal Collective playing together as a band. The return of Deakin is
at its most marked in ‘Wide Eyed’, a song that he wrote, featuring his first ever
lead-vocal performance and whose title captures the mood of Centipede Hz
perfectly.
Part of the inspiration for Centipede Hz included the band’s memories of
growing up listening to station announcements and commercials on the
radio and imagining the after life of radio signals from the past, forgotten
transmissions that are now lost in space and broadcasting music from other
planets for other life forms. This is reflected in the sound of Centipede Hz, which
features the white noise of radio interference and buried frequencies overlaid
with the band’s peerless melodic sensibilities and compositional methods. The
result is a panoramic set of songs that shimmer with the confidence and wonder
of Animal Collective’s unique inner logic and the luminous warmth of their sound
world.
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