Animal Collective - Tangerine Reef

Animal Collective (Avey Tare, Deakin and Geologist) have been around since the turn of the century and have come up with 12 albums, including the current Tangerine Reef and numerous solo outings and collaborations. Throughout, they have shown to be, at the same time, one of the more intriguing and experimental ‘modern music’ units that were able to attract and antagonise audiences at the same time.

Their uncompromising stance of not knowing what they will come up with next was exactly the cause of such disparate reactions. They were able to move from complete experimentation to pure harmony pop from one moment to another, usually on any of their albums or solo projects, of course, with healthy doses of hits and misses. Most of the time, the ‘hits’ or should I say good music winning.

In that respect, Tangerine Reef, in collaboration with another duo, Coral Morphologic, and presented as an audio-visual (double) album with a full featured film is no exception.

Usually, most press releases that accompany the albums are a lot of crock, but in this case, actually, the description that is given truly describes what is to be heard here, without even looking at the visual accompaniment: “Tangerine Reef is a visual tone poem consisting of time-lapse and slow pans across surreal aquascapes of naturally fluorescent coral and cameos by alien-like reef creatures (note: no CGI or artificial enhancement was used in this film). Tangerine Reef is the sight and sound of a literal underwater collective of animals.”

I’ve no idea what the contribution of Coral Morphologic (marine biologist Colin Foord and musician J.D. McKay ) is here, but in essence, it is archetypal Animal Collective all the way - a set of musical soundscapes that combines ever-shifting electronic sounds and meandering vocals that are to portray the life on any given coral reef. And as is usual with Animal Collective, they are able to constantly keep the listeners' interest, rarely going over the top or missing the mark.

Again, as with other Animal Collective albums, it will not be everybody’s bag, nor will it be something that you simply cannot take off your music system, but it never goes below being intriguing and often reaches the heights (as with “Buffalo Tomato” and “Jake and Me”, for example) the trio (in this case a quintet) are known to be able to come up with.