KEY POINTS:
Brian Weitz, the one known as Geologist in New York-based group Animal Collective, has just got some new kittens.
He and his girlfriend have been hanging out at home for most of the week playing games with them.
Chances are Weitz will record the cute critters' antics and they'll turn up as a sample on a future Animal Collective album, albeit in a warped and manipulated way.
"But they're not very talkative yet," laughs Weitz. He's the "found sounds" and field recordings guy in the experimental pop quartet, who play the Kings Arms on Wednesday.
"My job's the sort of weird one in the band, because I can't play guitar that well, and I'm the one who tries to take the lead role in the found sounds. But we all do it, because it's a pretty easy thing to do," he deadpans.
"Sometimes you just record people talking and then you listen back to it, isolate loops of weird vocal patterns, and other times it's like parades, or animals, or you'll be in your house and you'll hit something and it'll make a cool noise, like when you sit in a creaky chair, or something.
"A lot of the time I don't use the sounds in their raw state. We have a small arsenal of pedals and effects processes that we run the sounds through to make them fit the environment of the song a little better."
The band's last album, Feels, was a poppy and guitar-oriented album and their most accessible release to date. But Weitz is looking forward to getting back to a more off-kilter and weird musical style for the follow-up.
"With the new batch of songs, the main difference for me is moving away from guitar as the focal point, even though there are guitars it's about making them not sound like guitars, by finding different ways to play them and making them fit in texturally."
It's this sort of approach to making music that has earned the band a reputation for pushing musical boundaries. It's something Weitz is happy with but says it's just the way it turns out rather being anything contrived.
"I don't know if it's luck but we do comes across to most people as boundary pushing. As much as we're influenced by the past we're into making music that sounds very current and we don't want to be a retro-sounding band, so we're always looking to push the music in directions that we haven't heard before.
"But at the same time we're not doing it to make a statement or in some sort of dogmatic way where there are rules we have to follow and we have to push boundaries. We're just doing what we want and pushing boundaries, which seems to happen naturally for us."
They've all known each other since childhood but the quartet can be divided into two distinct musical schools of thought. Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) and Deakin (Josh Dibb) are influenced by acts like the Police and Bob Dylan, as well as 90s electronica weirdos Aphex Twin and Autechre. Meanwhile, Weitz and Avey Tare (David Portner) are influenced by 60s pyschedelia (Grateful Dead and Syd Barrett), and 90s indie rock (like Pavement).
The pair were fed 60s music by their older cousins. Also, a guy who worked in their school cafeteria used to make them Grateful Dead tapes and got them hooked on Syd Barrett and early Pink Floyd.
"I went to [the Grateful Dead's] last show before Jerry [Garcia] died. And Dave and I were influenced by horror movie soundtracks too and that's another reason we became good friends.
"We all just met from being around the same school, in the same city, and the fact we were all making our own music and not playing covers. We eventually started playing together and had these diverse interests that have all found their way into what we do as Animal Collective."
Experimental New Zealand bands like The Dead C, Handful of Dust, and Omit also played a formative role in his musical life. "I was really into noise music in the late 90s, so yeah, is Omit from New Zealand? Yeah, I was a big Omit fan for a while. Are the Go Betweens from New Zealand or Australia?"
They're Australian.
"Oh well, forget them then," he laughs.
He can't wait to visit New Zealand for the first time and they're staying for an extra week so they can go scuba diving.
Not that I've ever been scuba diving, but I recommend the Poor Knights.
"Yep, that's where we're heading," he says gleefully. "My job," he continues happily, "is basically hanging out with my three best friends making music and it makes life feel energetic and I never feel stuck in a rut. And I get to go scuba diving."
* Animal Collective, Kings Arms, Auckland, November 8
Albums: Campfire Songs (2003); Here Comes the Indian (2003); Sung Tongs (20040); Feels (2005).
