Lovable psychedelic oddballs Animal Collective joined the army of artists releasing new material on Record Store Day this year, putting out Transverse Temporal Gyrus via Domino. The 4-track EP had a limited release of 5,000 12” vinyl copies, and collages together studio cuts and material from Avey Tare, Deakin and Geologist’s live performances at the fiftieth anniversary of New York’s Guggenheim Museum two years ago.
It’s their first purely musical release since Merriweather Post Pavilion in 2009, and follows 2010’s visual album, ODDSAC, which featured some brilliantly trippy imagery (not a million miles away from the Transverse Temporal Gyrus artwork) being manipulated by Animal Collective’s noodlings.
Expanding on the electronic splutterings on the peripheries of the tracks on Merriweather, ‘Transverse Temporal Gyrus’ is more a constantly morphing soundscape, taking in all manner of digital glitches and beeps, snatches of vocal, ring modulator clangs and what sounds like some heavily-effected field recordings.
Someone has helpfully uploaded the EP’s tracks onto YouTube – you can listen below.
