Oregon Music News

Noah Lennox, better known as Panda Bear and one-fourth of Baltimore-based band Animal Collective, announced in an interview with Pedestrian.tv yesterday that he is knee-deep in recording for his next solo release.

The only concrete detail that Panda Bear gave away is that his next album will be very different from 2007’s Person Pitch, which provided the listener with a sonic layering of samples covered in reverb-heavy, yet disarmingly sincere vocals.

Panda Bear says that Animal Collective plan on moving away from the sample-based style that has been a staple in recent years and that his solo record will also reflect that change.

He discusses the major differences between his upcoming record and Person Pitch in this excerpt:

Ped. Tv: How’s that sounding? I know that you’ve mentioned being tired of the sample based stuff and the need to change your song writing process and sound by incorporating different instruments…

Panda Bear: Yeah, 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, its scary but also exciting as well.

I guess it’s liberating because you’re forced to approach it differently, what sort of sounds and instruments are you exploring?

The rhythms are really basic and kind of raw and simple and are electronic. It’s not live instrumentation, I’ve been playing guitar but I feed it through the same thing that the sequences are on. It’s a very electronic sound and very voice heavy. A simple arrangement of drums, the guitar and singing. Really there are only two or three elements to every song. It’s pretty raw sounding for better for worse.

What do you see as the main difference between what you’re writing now and Person Pitch?

The tone is a lot darker and it sounds sort of dramatic or romantic to me. But I’m in still in the thick of the thing so it’s really tough to be objective at this point. So I have no idea, but hopefully people like it. I hope its good.

Read the entire interview: Panda Bear Talks New Solo Album

With any luck we can hope to hear the new album sometime in 2010. The only constant with anything Animal Collective related is change, and they have yet to steer their listeners wrong. Until then, keep an eye out for Animal Collective’s upcoming EP, Fall Be Kind, set to be released December 8, 2009 on Domino.