- Animal Collective’s last album was mental. I don’t mean in a, "let’s go back past Merriweather Post Pavilion and all the pop deliciousness that had a wider audience flocking to listen to the band and re-assert our experimental credentials" kinda way. I mean in a way that was properly unsettling: there was something deeply uncomfortable about the experience. It was fairly widely publicised that Avey and co., but especially Avey had been going through dark times. Relationship angst, translated into a maximalist onslaught of messy rhythmic and harmonic overflow, wore me out after just a couple of listens. It wasn’t too experimental, it certainly wasn’t too pop, it was just too full-on and the band themselves, despite all the energy they were pumping out, sounded emotionally exhausted.

I was actually quite thrilled when Brian DeGraw of Gang Gang Dance got his hands on the track Monkey Riches. GGD didn’t appear to be suffering any emotional instability on their last album, in fact, they made a masterpiece. DeGraw infuses Animal Collective’s work with all the things he’s about right now: thrumming, dancey, electro beats, noodly experimentation and most importantly, playfulness. Avey’s fraught vocal left largely intact, is played off against the unconquerably upbeat dance and somehow it sounds like he’s making light of his situation, coming out of a dark tunnel and everything’s alright again.

Animal Collective have gone a bit further afield for some of their remixers, tapping Footwork producer Traxman to have a go at the same track. Traxman, actually from Chicago, makes proper footwork: tersely looped samples from the original speed along before the snares strike like a damn snake bite over the shuddering bass. There’s nothing playful about this, but it’s just damn exhilarating.

I love Shabazz Palaces and they do here what they usually do when tasked with remix duties: make something completely different out of New Town Burnout, including their own original verses. Atmosphere like psychedelic smoke pours off as though hip hop ninjas were about to bust out and cut you dead while quiet and eerie, distorted rapping bleeds out of the background and occasional bright shards of Animal Collective’s work splinter through. It doesn’t sound much like the original, although you can hear the barest skeleton of it. More importantly, it sounds good.

Teengirl Fantasy have a third crack at Monkey Riches and produce another dance interpretation, that is, if anything, more intense than Brian DeGraw’s. Difficult to say what it is, infusing elements of idm, trap and god knows what else. Unlike much idm however, it is actually danceable and breathlessly so.

Some people have found this little collection of remixes to be, still, too forbidding. Sure, it’s not all as approachable as Brian DeGraw’s material and when Gang Gang Dance is the least scary thing you’ve got...well. That’s not how I feel though: these tracks embrace Animal Collective’s exciting experimentalism and each one works, by itself and as a package. They also lack the exhausting heartache that made Centipede Hz such hard work. I wasn’t looking for that album to have a happy ending, but this provides one and it is most welcome.

- Chris Cobcroft.