Centipede Hz
Animal Collective are determined to overwhelm you. They do it with an unrelenting sound that mixes and matches genres with absurd speed and impeccable craft. Their music is a maze that is difficult to escape once you\'re submerged in the mix. \"Applesauce\" is simply insane, a manic panic that screams about fruit. \"Wide Eyed\" tightens up before loosening into a Magical Mystery Tour of psychedelic tones and elliptical drum circle dance grooves that are set up to trip anyone who dares to dance. Tempo shifts, key changes, ambient textures, pop rock tropes, hummable melodies and abstract concepts converge in unpredictable configurations. \"New Town Burnout\" is so dense and haunted that it\'s near impossible to suss out the influences, unless trampling orchestras can be considered an \"influence.\" Though in the past, members wandered in and out of a project, all four contributors are on deck for this release. At times hypnotic (\"Monkey Riches,\" \"Amanita\") and often jarring (take your pick), *Centipede Hz* may be the most challenging release of 2012.
On Centipede Hz, Animal Collective return to being a four-piece, an event that is reflected in the widescreen completeness of the album. This 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.
Following their critical and commercial breakthrough, 2009's Merriweather Post Pavilion, Animal Collective return with a dense and busy album that serves as the more anxious flipside to its blissed-out predecessor.
For all of the eager brain-twisting fueling the sound of albums like 2009’s celebrated Merriweather Post Pavilion, Animal Collective has always tried to leave signs of pop sensibility buried underneath, as if the group were determined to use the language of emotion to make purely cerebral statements. Because of that,…
There are things here that might not be noticed for years; favourite tracks, lyrics and atonal sections of fizzing noises being all, thrillingly, subject to change.
It only takes two ears to enjoy Animal Collective, even if you view them as a menace in the long run.
Animal Collective might not go on to split the atom (that might just be asking too much), but they do seem, yet again, to have invented an exciting new formula.
Animal Collective must be sick of the copy cats by now. Since 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion went stratospheric, their brand of cerebral electronic pop has been cut, pasted and plagiarised by scores of less accomplished drones. So much so that on first spin new LP Centipede Hz could easily be mistaken for yet another counterfeit, rather than the latest workings of the Baltimore quartet.
The follow-up to Merriweather Post Pavilion, Centipede Hz, is something of a visceral, dark yin to Merriweather’s lithe, DayGlo yang, with martial drumming, more conventionally structured melodies, and the feeling that the band had the time of their liv
On a rock in the far reaches of space some poor creatures are being inflicted with the Earth’s radio-waves - the inane topical phone-ins, jingles from cheesy commercials, and the usually banal top f
<p>Animal Collective's first album as a quartet in some time is wild yet radio-friendly, writes <strong>Kitty Empire</strong></p>
Animal Collective's 'Centipede Hz' is all too murky and familiar, less profoundly complex than inaccessibly complicated.
<p>Animal Collective's Centipede Hz finds the experimental indie darlings searching for yet another breakthrough, writes <strong>Tom Ewing</strong></p>
Crazy quilt psychedelia virtually guaranteed to induce a headache. CD review by Kieron Tyler