10 Albums Animal Collective’s Avey Tare Thinks Every Music Fan Should Own
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
The post 10 Albums Animal Collective’s Avey Tare Thinks Every Music Fan Should Own appeared first on Consequence.
Crate Digging is a recurring feature in which we take a deep dive into a genre and turn up several albums all music fans should know about. In this edition, Animal Collective’s Avey Tare shares his picks.
Animal Collective member Dave Portner — A.K.A. Avey Tare — is still a staunch believer in the album. “Hearing a full record doesn’t seem to be the most modern way of listening to music anymore, listening all the way through… but it’s still an important thing to the way I relate to making music and making records,” he tells Consequence over Zoom.
Avey Tare is particularly excited to chat about the magic of full albums as he gears up to release his fourth solo album, 7‘s (out Friday, February 17th). The album, which he recorded in Asheville, North Carolina during the pandemic with close collaborator Adam McDonald, is yet another psychedelic odyssey from Avey Tare. Though it was recorded during a period of significant uncertainty, 7’s is the sound of him raking through his imagination with style and playfulness, seeming both insular and extroverted at the same time.
Even though 7’s is comprised of — you guessed it — just seven songs, there’s a great deal of majesty revealed in listening to the album in full. But the album’s homespun grooves are also still (mostly) suitable for the dance floor; even the album’s more meditative tracks, like the 9-minute epic “Hey Bog,” bubble up like lava, exposing fascinating rhythmic choices and sticky melodies.
In celebration of the release of Avey Tare’s new album 7’s, Consequence caught up with the Animal Collective musician to get his picks for 10 albums he thinks everyone should own. More specifically, Portner has selected “10 albums that make him dance,” including classic picks from Bee Gees and Moodymann, to more contemporary choices from Kylie Minogue and KG & Uniiqu3.
Pylon – Gyrate
I feel like when I first got into it, it wouldn’t have maybe necessarily jumped out to me as a dance record. I guess I would have likened it more to a punk or post-punk record. But Pylon’s lead singer Vanessa Briscoe Hay has been a big influence on me singing-wise as well, so I gotta throw that one in there. I feel like the energy that she brings to Pylon is so crucial to making me be active and thrash about or dance about, and she has a great kind of scream-y snarl from time to time, which I definitely took note of early on in getting into singing, especially with Animal Collective. And then the tracks, they merged into some like dub-y territory, dub-y disco, which I really like a lot.
Essential Track: If I were putting this into a DJ set, I’d probably throw the song “Danger” into there. It’s a little bit slower of a BPM, but it has a nice disco groove and I really like slide-y guitar. It’s got some dubbed-out vocals, which I like a lot and it’s just a nice kind of “bring it down” track but keeps the groove going.
Liquid Liquid EP Collection
That time in New York, the early ’80s… I romanticize it a lot. I feel like it’s always seemed really appealing to me and especially a lot to do with the dance clubs and dance scene and dance bands that were happening at that time, like Liquid Liquid and ESG. It was big for me, and I feel like I heard these EPs — Optimo, Successive Reflexes, Liquid Liquid — around the same time that I heard Pylon’s Gyrate in the late-’90s/early aughts. I was getting really, really, really deep into dance music more than I ever had before.
Obviously, I got into Liquid Liquid because they have the “live band” thing going on and they’re a very interesting live band to me with primarily bringing bass and some chromatic percussion — marimba, xylophone, and singing, I think this combination is great. I’m always inspired by unique bands like that, that just have a sound that seems so alien to me, that have a dark side to me.
Essential Track: “Cavern.” It’s maybe the obvious hit, but it’s inspired other a lot of other music. Again, it’s sort of a darker place to take dance music or to take a DJ set. I’ve always found the delayed, reverb-y vocals just give it this kind of darker, more mysterious feel. And I like bands like that.
Luomo – Vocalcity
I worked at a record store in New York City called Other Music and I was just checking out so much music. There was a lot of dance music that was coming out at that time. And this record, I didn’t know a lot about house music back then, but it came out and made a big splash in the house music world for having a little bit of a different spin on house music. It’s very dub-y, I dig the production so much. There’s all these reverb-y vocals, layered and dumped out vocals, and the use of bass and low end is really interesting.
It kind of fades in and out, like it’s in reverse sometimes, and then it will mutate into an established bassline. And it’s all got this kind of smooth, very sensual, romantic, sexual-feeling music with all the breathy vocals. It gets you moving in that way. And I would say Luomo’s Vladislav Delay project was just very, very influential on my own music and on Animal Collective’s music.
Essential Track: On this album, what I would spin more lately in sets would be “Synkro.”
I-F – Mixed Up in the Hague
This is a CD that came out around the same time, the late-’90s/early aughts, and came into the record store. I don’t know if it was ever put out on vinyl, and it seems to be a mix. There are two volumes of it. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard Volume Two. I’m terrible with genres, but to me, this is a collection of what I would call electro, kind of like the late-’70s, early-’80s electro music. There’s still plenty of electro out there, but it’s kind of the crux of when disco started getting a little bit more electronic, and drum machines started getting implemented a little bit more over live drummers (although there is the cross of both in this). It’s just a really great mix of that era of music and I couldn’t recommend it more for that fact.
Essential Track: “Spacer Woman” by Charlie, which is an Italo disco track. And that’s this kind of space-age era track with vocoded vocals. Just a really great disco-y, analog synth-driven tune for the dance floor.
KG and Uniiqu3 – “B2B/Black Roses” 12″
This artists either goes by KG or Karen AMA, and I’ve gotten into her production a lot. I got into her music around the 2020 pandemic and just did a lot of deep music diving, as I’m sure a lot of other big music heads did. I had a little Zoom dance group, during quarantine times, just to get us through. I’d meet up with some people on Zoom, and we each picked tracks to play for the whole group. And then we’d all kind of dance on Zoom together. And I remember this being a track, “B2B.” It’s sort of the A-side to this collaboration with KG and Uniiqu3, who’s a producer from Philadelphia that I’m currently digging stuff by.
But I think KG probably handles a lot of the rhythm here, and I dig her kind of sparse rhythms. Maybe not sparse, but more spacious and spread out. I’ve read that it’s influenced a lot by African rhythms and percussion, and that definitely comes out in this track. It has some cool vocal loop shots, which I’m a big sucker for good vocal samples, and good melodic vibes in there.
Essential Track: “B2B.” It’s a great current track to jam or dance to.
Moodymann – “Got Me Coming Back Right Now” – Single
I could talk about Moodymann’s music all day. Especially his current stuff — it’s easy to pick a Moodymann record that could get me dancing, there have been many. This track is more current, so I’d pick this one since it’s just a single. I feel like his progressions of late are just so interesting, and his use of sampling is so cool. It’s almost like sometimes there’s two different kinds of chord structures happening at the same time, or two different songs, because of the samples playing at the same time.
He just has these really great progressions, and I think dance music is really influential that way for me, because even though some of these tracks that we’re talking about can be in the eight to 12-minute range, a lot can happen in there. The structure, the A-B-A-B chorus vibe just gets totally thrown out the window because everything is based more on the rhythms and dancing. You can kind of take the progression of the song wherever you want to, as long as the motivation is to keep people moving. That influences me a lot and I think about that a lot when making jams.
Essential Track: “Got Me Coming Back Right Now.” I think this track has such a cool energy. It goes into a middle part where it gets a lot more melodic and these synth strings come in and the vocals change a little bit. But then later on it goes back into the way it was in the beginning.
Bee Gees – Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack
I love the Bee Gees, so I had to throw them in somehow. I think it’s more because I know people nowadays that are just getting into the Bee Gees more, and I’ve been a Bee Gees fan since I was a kid. I guess I picked this because it was probably obvious, and for most people probably, it’s the first thing that they get into or they heard by the Bee Gees. I think there’s always this argument, especially by like punk rock people or underground people on “Stayin’ Alive,” “Oh, god, it’s terrible,” and there’s so many songs that I feel like are overplayed and I could hear too much and I agree with all that sort of criticism.
But also, to me, “Stayin’ Alive” is just such an amazing song and it’s all about that bassline. And I’ve been getting a lot more into bass, playing with Animal Collective and doing some bass playing on this new solo record. I think that bassline, and how it works into the melody, is incredible, and I think Barry Gibb is such a great songwriter. It’s just a really inspiring song and I think a lot of their other great pop songs and dance songs are on that soundtrack, like “Night Fever,” and “Jive Talkin’.”
Essential Track: “Jive Talkin.'” I think that is a super cool song. The way it starts with the muted guitar, creating the rhythm, and the kind of dirty bassline comes in, and then the melody sort of slowly reveals itself… then you get the Bee Gees singing in harmony finally coming in with the heavy drums and it’s got some great synth solos in it.
The Slits – “Earthbeat” 12″
Yes, this was played to me by a friend who had the 12-inch, a roommate and close friend of mine, Eric Copeland. He had the 12-inch, and we used to listen to it a bunch. I was never a huge Slits fan until hearing this song. It definitely opened up doors for me for them. But more than The Slits, I’m also a huge Dennis Bovell fan. He’s a dope producer from England. I love the combination of organic percussion and the sort-of minimalist side of this, that’s just singing and drums and percussion.
I love a good track that can thrive on minimalism, but also be alive in the same way that Liquid Liquid is like that as a live band, playing stuff. It’s tweaked out by one of my favorite producers. And I think that it’s kind of an interesting jam to dig into. It might not make everyone dance. It’s a different kind of dance. It’s more like… an earth beat. Like a free-form, swirling kind of dance but you got to have that too.
Essential Track: “Earth Beat.”
Kylie Minogue – Fever
It’s a huge pop record. Every so often, a pop record will come out, especially a dance-y pop record, and really floor me. This record specifically, it’s the most popular, but it’s undeniable. “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” was jammed a lot in New York clubs when it came out and I was going out trying to check out dance music, a lot of DJs would play it. It has that kind of minimal house feeling that can fit in amongst other kinds of classic house jams, and it’s a little bit darker of a melody. It just soars as it gets towards the chorus, it feels very subdued and heavy and then takes off — which a lot of Kylie songs and pop songs in general do with the chorus, the chorus has got to be big.
But this chorus isn’t necessarily huge and epic, it just brings in some kind of revolving synth, rhythmic stabs, and just takes it to the next level. I think it’s just a really solid dance record with a lot of good songs on it.
Essential Track: “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.”
V/A – 5 Years Burnin Music
So this is a compilation on a label I just discovered this year. It’s a new label and I wanted to have some current stuff on there. It’s varied. To me, a lot of it is very soulful house music. But it’s got some uptempo and downtempo stuff on it, and a lot of cool melodic stuff on it. It’s just nice to be still able to find a lot of good dance music that’s coming out. I feel like there’s a lot of stuff coming out these days in the house world, but there’s also stuff that’s kind of referential to older house music, but has new feelings to it.
Essential Track: “Move On” by Hugo Mari.
10 Albums Animal Collective’s Avey Tare Thinks Every Music Fan Should Own
Paolo Ragusa
Popular Posts
