Animal Collective nominated for Brit Award?!?

No, that's not a typo at the top of this post - in a bizarre turn of events, hipster's choice Animal Collective have been nominated for TWO Brit Awards. They are up for Best International Album, slightly unsurprising considering the great critical success and relative commercial success of Merriweather Post Pavilion, and are amusingly also nominated for International Breakthrough Act, despite the 10 years and 8 albums to their name. 

Personally, this is blatant attempt to play catch up and desperately grapple for a 'cool' nominee, and has been made for purely aesthetic purposes. It's slightly cringeworthy and pathetic that the panel feel the need to pad the list out with an act that sticks out a sore thumb. Will the 13 year old girls down the front remember their name? Probably not. But it sure would be a surreal sight to see them hangin' out at Earls Court with JLS, Pixie Lott, La Roux et al (if they turn up that is). 

New Panda Bear album

In a recent interview with Pedestrian.tv, Animal Collective’s Panda Bear has been discussing his upcoming solo project, albeit rather vaguely.

Coming two years since the release of the critically acclaimed ‘Person Pitch’. Noah Lennox has indicated that his new album will veer away from the sample-heavy songs that he and Animal Collective are so well known for: “It’s going pretty good. It’s been a long process. I’ve thought about it for a long time while we were doing the Merriweather stuff, so I had a long gestation process in my mind but only really started cracking on it in September. It’s kind of scary doing something totally different, like I've been working in a sampler zone for five or six years now. It definitely feels like a new zone, it’s scary but also exciting as well.

“The rhythms are really basic and kind of raw and simple and are electronic. The tone is a lot darker and it sounds sort of dramatic or romantic to me”.

Meanwhile, Animal Collective are set for a new EP entitled “Fall Be Kind”. It will be released on Vinyl and CD on December 15.