Altered Zones

The dark, dubby, and deeply personal Down There marks the first proper solo album from Animal Collective's Avey Tare. Following the recording of Merriweather Post Pavillion, a breakthrough critical success and AC's most accessible album to date, Avey Tare began quietly crafting his own body of bedroom mythology to battle his personal demons. Altered Zones took a stroll through McGolrick Park with Avey to discuss the origins of Down There, musique concrète, and '80s cult horror films.

AZ: Tell me about the creative process for Down There.

AT: A lot of it started in my head while working on "ODDSAC". I was using a lot of new synthesizers and oscillators and wrote a lot of it by myself in our old practice space and in my apartment. I have this 8-track reel-to-reel and it got me really psyched to work on something with more of a bedroom feel. Animal Collective usually does stuff in big studios these days. It seemed sweet to just take my time and work on some of my own bedroom songs. When we were on tour in South America, I remember being in the airport, thinking about a song, and starting to work on it from there.

AZ: Was there something that triggered the inspiration?

AT: A lot of songs come to me just out of the blue, or in the morning between being asleep and awake. I was thinking about a specific idea at the airport, like what type of song I could make. It’s really hard to put into words because it’s just a sound or melody you hear, and it ended up becoming "Ghost of Books". That song has changed a lot over the past two years. Originally, it was a lot faster, but the more I thought about the record as a whole, the more I wanted it to be in this kind of murky swamp.

AZ: Sonically, it's a hot and humid place, maybe even a Hell.

AT: It’s Hell in the most day-to-day sense, when you're dealing with all the bad stuff that happens to you, that kind of hell. I don't want it to sound literally like Hell. Maybe like suffering, but there’s hope in it for me. It’s not all bad news [laughs]. It's really a way for me to work through the stuff that might be going on in my head and to get it out through music, to clarify it in a song.

AZ: Tell me about the first 50 seconds of the opening track, “Laughing Hieroglyphic”.

AT: I wanted to have the feel of an accident happening-- myself, or some sort of character, suddenly finding themselves in the world that the record is going to start taking place in. I want to put the listener into that world. It's a disorientating place at the beginning but it comes together in this moving, cyclical way with "Laughing Hieroglyphic". Maybe an accident happens, and this person's dad dies and there is some sort of afterlife, or an intermediary place that's between life and death or something. It's a swampy, ghostly kind of afterlife. I read a lot of ghost stories, Egyptian/Greek myths, and things like that. I use myths for inspiration to create my own. To turn real stuff into that kind of feeling, that kind of myth.

AZ: It’s a darker, more mature record. Do you think you could have written something like Down There earlier in your career?

AT: The inspiration for the record is a lot more mature. It comes with being this age, and being at this time in my life where I am thinking about myself. “Laughing Hieroglyphic" is about apologizing to somebody for acting a certain way, or maybe not acting a certain way. For me, that song encompasses a lot of feelings. It isn't specifically pointed at one person, but it's about dealing with change and being aware that you have to change yourself. Looking at your past, and realizing "I was this way then. I’ve worked on it, and maybe not everything went the way I had planned, but it's helped me become a better person”. Down There is not as innocent as stuff I would have made when I was younger. There's also not this purposefully self-aware quality to it, or a naivete to it.

AZ: You use samples from '80s cult horror movies like Swamp Thing and Pet Semetery, among others. Can you describe the role they play in Down There?

AT: They have a personal meaning to me, just in terms of growing up and stuff I was into. It helps me create that world, that environment. I don't want everything to be too literal, it's more about a mood to me. I've always liked how vocal samples are used in musique concrète, specifically Robert Ashley's "Automatic Writing” and Luc Ferrari’s “Presque Rien”. Those are two big ones that I’ve always liked in terms of what vocalists do, having more of an emotional feeling in what you would call an “experimental piece”.

AZ: What’ve you been listening to lately?

AT: I listen to a lot of Kyle Hall, Omar S, and the older James Blake stuff. I really like Teengirl Fantasy and Prince Rama. I really got into the newer Beach House record. I like Noah’s songs; "You Can Count On Me" is definitely one of the best songs I've heard all year. I continue to love Black Dice and Eric Copeland as well. I'm really inspired by what a lot of my friends are doing now around me.

AZ: Your sister Abby has always been really involved in with the visual components of Animal Collective, and interviewed you in the "Down There News" video.

AT: A lot of the stuff for Down There has been a collaboration between her and me, the video she made for "Lucky 1" being primarily her stuff. I kind of had a simple idea, but all the drawings are her creations. "Down There News" was a collaboration; we shot it together, getting it to look that way together, and I did all the sounds. With AC too, she does most of our shirts, and she did the album cover for Sung Tongs.

AZ: How did you decide which songs are right for AC, versus your solo material?

AT: At that point, Merriweather Post Pavillion had already been recorded, so AC didn't have any plans to do anything new aside from working on "ODDSAC", whose scenes were the guidelines for writing that music. Everything else I wrote from then on is Down There. I didn't even plan on personally recording an album, but as the songs came I geared them toward something I had been doing because it was comfortable. When I write things for AC I think about leaving space open for everybody to put stuff into. For some reason, a lot of people expect the AC stuff to have all this crazy stuff going on in the music. I didn't want to feel pressured to have that kind of sound. I wanted Down There to sound like it was done by one person. I wanted it to be minimal.

AZ: What’s next for you?

AT: Early next year, AC will start playing a lot more together and trying to work on some new songs. Hopefully, we'll get to a point where we can play some shows next year, or record an album. It’s hard to say at this point.

Down There is out now on Paw Tracks via CD, LP, and digital download