Animal Collective - Hollinndagain
[Paw Tracks]

This seven-track re-release of now super-rare album Hollinndagain shows an Animal Collective at perhaps their most base state ever on record. The tracks are taken from live performances and were never laid down in a studio, but are remarkably well recorded, taken from performances on WFMU radio and on tour with Black Dice.

Hollinndagain is a much less melodic affair than any other Animal Collective work and exists with only a flicker of structure, the beginnings of the mashed-up pop melodics we hear now in 'Feels' present just below the surface, although manifesting themselves in feedback, drones and sporadic percussion.

'Forest Gospel' erupts with erratic drumming, deconstructing to simple vocals loops, built up and around a break out of what can only be described as thrashing about. Other tracks are less immediate, a slow build of sonic feedback building under sampled loops and unidentifiable found sounds, as in 'There's an Arrow'

A heavily experimental work, one feels these tracks don't translate fully from the live, the energy of the on-stage just being lost on record. All the same, Hollinndagain shows the development of Animal Collective, from experimentation to structure and melody, without losing the ethos of the more accessible recent work we all recognise.