Zune.net | Animal Collective - Artist Profile Page

Friends and musical partners since 1992, core members Avey Tare (a.k.a. David Porter) and Panda Bear (a.k.a. Noah Lennox) came together in 2000 with the intention of moving pop music in a direction that would place heavy emphasis on sonic experience. Soon after this, they began operating as Animal Collective, an umbrella name now used for a grouping of four people.

Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist (a.k.a. Brian Weitz), and Deaken (a.k.a. Conrad Deaken) play together under different names and in different configurations. Their releases are always prone to continual musical change: from beautifully skewed pop ballads to fiercely ruptured noise-squalls to tribal rhythmic work-outs to simple folk songs, to who knows where; from fully orchestrated group freak-outs to the intimacy of an acoustic duo.

In whatever formation, Animal Collective is a genuinely thrilling live unit, passionately committed and unafraid to put themselves on the line.

The Collective’s first offering was a stunning collaboration between Avey Tare and Panda Bear called Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished, released on their own label Animal in August of 2000. A second album, Danse Manatee was released by Catsup Plate in July 2001, which was accompanied by a month-long U.S. tour with their friends Black Dice. The next year they released a limited-edition, vinyl-only on St.Ives (a sub-label of Secretly Canadian) called Hollinndagain, which was made up of recordings from live shows.

In 2003, they released Campfire Songs, a collection of songs recorded live on a screened-in porch in rural Maryland on Catsup Plate, Here Comes the Indian on Carpark’s imprint label Paw Tracks, and three tracks from Avey Tare also appeared on a Split 12″ shared with David Grubbs. The next year, the group released their twisted yet masterly pop album, Sung Tongs, and followed it with the album Feels, which was released in October of 2005.

The group’s first release of 2007, People, features three previously unreleased tracks (plus one live version), which were recorded at the same sessions as the band’s hugely successful Feels album.

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