Yesterday afternoon I trekked out to the Upper East Side to check out Animal Collective and Danny Perez‘s audio/visual performance installation at The Guggenheim Museum. The sold out performances took place in the “womb” of the museum and lasted 3 hours each (one show at 4:30, followed by a second at 7:30) and were in celebration of the museum’s 50th anniversary.
Fans lined up around the block, knowing very little about what was actually going to take place. Basically the performance consisted of cloaked Animal Collective band members Geologist, Deakin and Avey Tare wearing rabbit-like masks. The masked figures moved and turned very very slowly behind orbs in an icy setting onto which visuals were projected to the sound of ambient-like noises and clangs. It was a pretty cool experience which you could only really appreciate by walking through the different levels to observe from different angles.
Fans lingered for hours hoping for something, anything to happen: the band to perform a set of their music or something crazy and unexpected. Kids dressed in glitter, feathers and face paint left the museum to walk the streets of Manhattan in dismay.
I’ve seen AnCo live before and to be honest I can only tolerate their set for a certain amount of time, however this installation was maybe too easy to digest. Anyhow it was cool for what it was, I guess. I will never really “get” their cult-like appeal…or maybe I just need to take more drugs?
mp3: Animal Collective – Cuckoo Cuckoo [alt]
mp3: Animal Collective – College (Etherea Remix) [alt]
It sucked. Don’t be afraid to say it. People were paying a fortune to get into the show on Craigslist, etc. Lucky for me, I got a ticket to the 9pm show on the site. Sometimes the muzak would climax and then pause. At that point you’d hear screaming from the crowd hoping the band would do something…but nope.
Haha, appreciate your feedback Carl. Way overpriced for very little show!
Yeah, Cape Cod really doesn’t offer stuff like this. And, yes, Tony I understand why you don’t get AC’s ridiculous cult following. I’m a card carrying member of the cult and I don’t really get why I’m in it. Probably because there’s really nobody out there that sounds substantially similar, and that’s what I search for in music. That said, I don’t doubt that the show was really overblown and it sucked. Three hours of noise/drone crap is generally intolerable, no matter how cool your bunny masks are. But, maybe you do need to take more drugs…
-NC
[...] For those of you not in the UK last fall for The Xx’s Sculpture album sculpture will get the chance to see it along with the other exhibits on site along with films by Spike Jonze and Animal Collective/Danny Perez. [...]