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Animal Collective has released an advance streaming of its newest album on its official website. Videos accompany all eleven tracks, which spans a lengthy 55 minutes.

Animal Collective is composed of four indie-rock artists: Avey Tare, Deakin, Geologist and Panda Bear. It is essentially an Avenger-like super group that has assembled for roughly a decade to produce original psychedelic music. The group reached its peak acclaim in 2009 with “Merriweather Post Pavilion,” a masterpiece that scored in the top 105 albums of all time on Metacritic — a site that conglomerates various critic reviews to produce a single average score for every release.

Set to officially release on Sept. 4, Animal Collective’s new album “Centipede Hz” takes the energy up several notches from “Merriweather Post Pavilion.” There are no songs akin to the refined “My Girls” or “Bluish” on this album because the project lacks that trancelike delicacy. However, “Centipede Hz” does not need to follow the band’s previous album’s welcoming warmth to succeed — it embraces the opposite style.

In an interview with Under The Radar, band member Josh Dibb (Deakin) explains the group’s approach to the album: “We wanted things to be more raw, and ‘sweaty’ is a word that some of us used a lot; we really wanted it to be something that felt more visceral.”

Visceral is one way to put it.

There exists a semi-conscious state that occurs immediately before sleep known as hypnagogia. It is during this stage that bizarre sounds, images and colors blend to form fantastic hallucinations that are forgotten upon waking.  After watching the exceptionally creative quality of both the songs and the videos on the “Centipede Hz” stream, it seems that Animal Collective has been able to tap into the hypnagogic state and duplicate its magic.

On the website stream, there are planets and outer space as seen through a wet windshield, a jovial voice singing about mangos and rolling honey, the cool mist of a colored tide splashing against a cave wall, pulsating electronic sounds best heard through headphones and a recurring pair of lips singing through mustard-yellow teeth. Not to mention the excessive use of colors — lots of colors.

“Centipede Hz” emits confidence. The vocalists are unreservedly having fun and the atmospheric music is expertly raw and sweaty, as desired.

Unlike the hypnagogic state, Animal Collective’s newest creative effort is shaping up to be as unforgettable as it is trippy.

 

Check out the new album at radio.myanimalhome.net.

 

Reach the reporter at jconigli@asu.edu


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