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Animal Collective
Avey Tare & Kria Brekkan
Black Dice
Eric Copeland
Excepter
First Nation
Jane
Panda Bear
Peppermints
Rings
Ariel Pink
Terrestrial Tones
Tickley Feather

Animal Collective
Animal Collective are four friends who like to get together to play music and watch movies and play football (a.k.a. soccer).

Paw Tracks Releases:


Here Comes the Indian	Wastered	Hollinndagain

Avey Tare & Kria Brekkan
Avey Tare is Dave Portner of Animal Collective and Kria Brekkan is Kristin Anna Valtysdottir formerly of the band múm. The two met a few years back and started playing music together in the summer of 2005. Recently they married and now live together in New York City. They recorded their debut collaboration “Pullhair Rubeye” with guitars and piano on an eight track in their practice space in Brooklyn. Then they traveled to upstate New York where the record was mixed down onto a two track borrowed from a friend who bought it at a garage sale for a dollar. Just as the two were completing the mix, the two track broke down and Avey and Kria didn’t hear the mixes until two months later when they obtained another two track. After this short vacation, they were surprised by the sounds they had made.

Paw Tracks Releases:


Pullhair Rubeye

Black Dice (website)
Black Dice was born in 1997 in Providence, Rhode Island. Early singles on Gravity and Verminscum document their thrash sound before their move to NYC in 1999, where established the long-running lineup of Bjorn and Eric Copeland and Aaron Warren. Banned in the city, Black Dice relocated to Brooklyn, where they presently reside and continue releasing records and visual art (DFA Records, Picturebox Inc, Fusetron, et al). Known for their constant reinvention as well as the volume of their live shows, Black Dice continue to create a wide musical world for themselves with a vast vocabulary of sounds in which to play.

Alongside museum appearances and galleries, Black Dice have also managed to keep an extreme DIY approach to their work, finding equal homes in basements and warehouses as well as more formal spaces. Working in relative seclusion in their own basement, Black Dice’s excursions out into the world have the ability to confound or envelope an audience. Often times it’s a little of both. Maybe they need to get out more, as they often seem to be sinking deeper into their own world, with their own rules and customs.

Paw Tracks Releases:


Roll up b/w Drool	Roll up b/w Drool

Eric Copeland
Eric Copeland is a prominent member of New York’s Black Dice and Terrestrial Tones. For the past two years, he has amassed and twisted a variety of music and sounds, resulting in Hermaphrodite, his first proper solo album. Hopscotching a free range of structures, sources, and styles, this album is unlike any other, crossing the wires of foreign radio, space transmissions, artificial vocal ensembles, electronic street conversations and lost pop music. But these compositions don’t highlight the sound dynamics as much as they let each song shake and unfold into a very open world, continually broadening. Like a good mix tape, Hermaphrodite flips the listener with each new song, engaging them to keep up, make the connections, and, ultimately, enjoy.

Paw Tracks Releases:


Hermaphrodite

Excepter (website)
Excepter is a freewheeling American vocal and electronics troupe dedicated to the illumination of unconscious rock through hypnotism and trickery, electricity city, aqua vitae.

2007 was a strange year for Excepter, strangest of bands. Surviving label self-destruction, Excepter responded by declaring a "weirdos only" maxim devoted to the erasure of all logical reception. In league with true futurists, Excepter had their first move already in place months in advance, their contribution to the grand Magic Lantern tradition, a carousel entitled KKKKK issued on a spilt 12" single with new label patron Panda Bear. Next, Excepter checked in with cassette culture with their dubbed-out and car stereo-intended Tank Tapes on the storied Fuck It Tapes imprint. Already haven mastered the art of the thirty-minute opening set, Excepter obliterated all concept of brevity with their pair of six-hour sessions at the avant-garde Brooklyn restaurant Monkey Town, recordings from one of which became the reigning "Longest Single MP3 in Internet History." The band's free STREAMS series gained much attention in other regards with the Fusetron release of a 2CD retrospective of the Internet phenomenon, recent additions of which found the act performing "Louie Louie" in a suburban New Jersey jazz club.

Paw Tracks Releases:


Carrots/KKKKK	'Burgers b/w The Punjab	Debt Dept.

First Nation (website)
First Nation is Nina Mehta, Abby Portner and Kate Rosko, three women who live and play in New York City. The three of us came together when Abby joined in June of 2006, after Nina and Kate played and released a seven inch and full length album with Melissa Livaudais. The three of us started writing new material in our apartments, playing a sampler and keyboard through a stereo receiver and using acoustic guitars and a tiny Gorilla amplifier. Eventually we found a practice space in between our
neighborhoods. It has a piano and is really nice, except it smells like oil from the oil burner in the basement. This is where we wrote the songs we've been playing around New York. We just recorded them this March at Rove Studios in Kentucky where Kristin Anna Valtysdottir aka Kria Brekken joined our crew as producer.

We all sing a lot, play drums, guitars and keyboards in circular patchworked tranced feminist compositions. We're inspired by lots of different music, like folk, hip hop and r&b, and traditional and pop music from our own city and farther lands.

First Nation's always in the process of changing names, due to the problematic appropriation from communities who use that name to self identify. But, like its wider implications, we challenge notions of nations, numbers, names through our play and look for new definitions in what we do and how we do it.

Paw Tracks Releases:


Coronation 7"	First Nation CD

Jane
Scotty and I worked together at a record store in NYC. He was a DJ around town and he still is I think. We both really liked dance music and dance music from the very beginning and I mean stomps and shouts and claps and stuff like that. Of course we like all kinds of other stuff too, but it's the dance that gets us going on Jane. We played once at the Animal Collective practice space, but found it much more pleasant to play at Scotty's home in Greenpoint where he had his mixer and simple microphones and we would drink brews and talk about all kinds of things and then play. I would usually sing about stuff I was thinking about that day and Scotty would move with it, playing jams and it would all kind of pour out. We liked all the mechanical robo dance jams from Detroit and Chicago and Germany but we wanted to do something with less 0's and 1's and more souls. Mostly it was about hanging out together and talking and playing music that was about talking together and hanging out and thinking and feeling and having fun and dancing most of all. — Panda Bear

Paw Tracks Releases:


Berserker

Panda Bear (myspace page)
Instinctively nomadic and musically inquisitive, Panda Bear (Noah) has always been searching the land for inspiration and meaning. As a teenager in his hometown of Baltimore, Panda Bear created his first solo record, the long out-of-print, first (and last) album on his and Deakin’s (Joshmin) Soccer Star Records. Panda then made his way to University in Boston. Trouble and crazy things happened so he came down to New York at the turn of the millennium to congregate with his recently-convened Animal brethren (Avey Tare, Geologist, and Deakin). The Animal Collective was born again. When not working on Animal Collective material, Panda Bear creates lots of music by himself and with Scotty Mou (DJ Casio/Queens) in Jane. He also makes jams with the other Animal bros and Rusty Santos for fashion shows as Together. Never sticking with any particular sound, Panda’s range goes from the quiet humble jams of Young Prayer to the housejams of Jane. Panda Bear currently resides in Lisbon, Portugal.

Paw Tracks Releases:


Young Prayer (mp3)	Carrots/KKKKK split LP	Person Pitch CD


Live at ZDB, Lisbon, Portugal, September 2004 (parts 1 & 2) digital-only	Take Pills b/w Bonfire of the Vanities

Peppermints (website)
The Peppermints have been bratting around the world since 1997. Born in Bonsall, California (world avocado capital), they soon slithered into San Diego, world capital of military bases and wet burritos. They slimed their way through the music-scene muck to become the queens and king of what they call "experimental barfy trash-rock." Their sound has been compared at times to the likes of GG Allin, The Fall, Melt Banana, Joan Jett, The Coachwhips, The Soft Boys, Wire, and Noh Mercy, but critics have been flummoxed trying to define the Peppermints. Their first releases were cassettes on the Ivy Oh! imprint. Later, they put out a 7" on Pet Set Records, then an EP on Ivy Oh! and NGWTT. On April Fools' Day, 2003, out came Sweettooth Abortion (with guest appearances by members of Kill Me Tomorrow) on Pandacide Records. They have toured the west coast too many times to count, including a 2004 fall tour with the Hot Snakes, and have done the US at least three times that they can remember. One Peppermint has led another life in the band T Tauri. And the rest is yet to come...

Paw Tracks Releases:


Jesüs Chryst (mp3)

Ariel Pink (website)
After years of recording in relative seclusion in the hills of Los Angeles, Ariel Pink (the first non-Animal Collective member on the Paw Tracks roster) made his official Paw Tracks debut with The Doldrums. Recording at home with a guitar, bass, keyboard, and 8-track (the drum sounds are all unbelievably created with his mouth), Ariel Pink blends Lite FM and warped lo-fi pop into something beautiful and confusing, yet highly addictive.

Paw Tracks Releases:


The Doldrums (mp3)	Worn Copy (mp3)	House Arrest (mp3)

Rings (website)
Rings is Nina Mehta, Abby Portner and Kate Rosko, three women who live and play in New York City. The three of us came together when Abby joined in June of 2006, after Nina and Kate and former member Melissa Livaudais released an album and seven inch under the name First Nation. The three of us started writing new material, and continued to play under the name First Nation, until we recorded our album in Rove Studios in Kentucky with Kristin Anna Valtysdottir aka Kria Brekken (formerly of the band Mum). The record was going to be called Rings, but, then we decided that 'Rings' described us as a band more than First Nation. We all sing a lot, play drums, guitars and keyboards in circular patchworked tranced feminist compositions. We're inspired by lots of different music, like folk, hip hop and r&b, and traditional and pop music from our own city and farther lands. Rings is a name for our circular compositions, the bonds between us, our decision-making processes, and the circular shapes around us, interlocking, connected, feminine, whole, continuous...

Paw Tracks Releases:


Black Habit

Terrestrial Tones
Brooklyn’s Terrestrial Tones is the roommate duo of Eric Copeland (Black Dice) and Dave Portner (The Animal Collective). Over the years the two have been quietly making music in between Animal Collective and Black Dice commitments.

Paw Tracks Releases:


Dead Drunk

Tickley Feather (website)
Tickley Feather is Annie Sachs. She grew up in rural Virginia but has been living in Philadelphia for 5 years now. She has been using her time learning to write and record her own music as part of her nights spent at home, adapting to being the single mother of a young child. Sachs is a four tracking hobbyist who's musical spirit dwells in the realm of her own natural inclinations. She is a firm believer in doing what feels right, and in her recordings she really uses her solo status to great advantage. It adds up a very personal sound which involves all sorts of sensations from serendipity to silliness, and even the sweet and eerie sound of her little boy's voice as he tells her his ideas. Her recordings have been praised by critics from the start, with comparisons to work by artists such as Syd Barrett, Kate Bush, and Gilli Smith, and all the while being given credit for having a sound that is completely its own. Now she's coming in from the outside to share her songs and it's precious beyond value.

Paw Tracks Releases:


Tickley Feather