In terms of what makes a solo record as opposed to an Animal Collective record, is it just due to timing? Or is it, like, you have a concept for an album? Is there anything other than timing to do with where the songs end up?

Uh, I feel like there used to be more, more so.

I used to feel like, uh, I ha- if, if I knew something, a song was gonna be for the band, I had to kinda leave it unfinished or sort of open in some way so that the other guys could find their way in there.

But I think at this point, having done this stuff for so long and having done stuff together for so long, we can kind of ...

E- especially because we began to rework old songs a lot, and I think kind of developing that muscle, uh, I don't have to think so much about the target for a song anymore, I think.

Or I, I certainly don't worry about it as much.

Uh, I just sorta make stuff, and sometimes if, um, a song doesn't find a home on something I'm doing, uh, I'll bring it to the, the group, and we'll kinda see what happens.

Did, did you learn anything about the mechanics of, you know, putting out records and how it actually works?

Noah, how long did it take for you to c- to call him on that?

Can't remember how long it was, but it couldn't have been super long.

Maybe, uh, like a month or so.

And I was making these tracks for the thing after Person Pitch, and I, uh, I wanted somebody to mix it.

I don't feel like I'm super good at that side of things, the engineering, the mixing.

I can't say that's my forte.

So I always like to have somebody else kinda, like, translate the recordings in some way and sort of, uh, improve them in ways that I, I don't feel like I really have the skill set for.

Noah, how did you wind up out there?

You know, that would almost be worse.

Well, I feel like that was sort of the idea with this stuff is like we're going to be better at giving you stuff that you like than a person could, like a radio DJ or reading reviews in a magazine or something like that.

These people are going to choose stuff that they like, and you may not like that.

We're going to be better with the algorithm at predicting that, the kind of thing that you're really going to be into.

But I think that's not the case.

It feels like, especially there's a lot of things I think about friends giving me a record and saying, you might like this, or I really like this, and maybe I didn't like it at first, and grew to like it, or...

Listened to it a couple times over several years, and the fourth or fifth time that I listened to it, I kind of felt something about it that was different than the first couple times.

folks such as yourselves who've been doing this for quite a few decades um so what would you say to the younger artist asking this question is there still a benefit towards playing the game so to speak by industry standards uh when you're trying to cultivate an audience how might that differ from someone who already has their a dedicated listener base you think

Um, uh, can you just talk about, uh, making a record that sounds so kind of bright even in these less than bright circumstances?

circumstances?Well, I'm happy to hear you say that, but I feel like I should say that all this sort of more conceptual stuff is really at, at the end of the process.

We certainly didn't go into the thing thinking about that stuff so much.

It was more sort of, um...

It felt sort of appropriate on the back end of it.

Like, on the, on the front end it was just about, as it typically is I, I would say for us, it was more just about having fun and, uh, enjoying each other's company.

And a lot of the times when Pete sends me a beat or a, like a foundation, I just wanna make something that's gonna get him excited or that, that kinda gets him going, you know what I'm saying? So, uh, e- even though kind of on the back end there's s- sort of all this stuff that I, I'm glad we're considering, but I can't say that, uh, that was the intention or, or the target, uh, when we started.

I guess, like how did that, how did that shift? Was it just a matter of kind of changing literally like the names on the spine of the record? Or is there something fundamentally kinda different about the way, say, this album was created versus like Grim Reaper?

Yeah.

I would say, uh, either the Black Metal albums that Dean Blunt did.

Both of them are super good.

You could really choose any Dean Blunt or affiliated project.

He's just one of my favorite things going.

Al- always has cool ideas.

The shows are always amazing.

Noah, you got one last one?