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Animal Collective
Avey Tare
Avey Tare & Kría Brekkan
Black Dice
Kría Brekkan
Eric Copeland
Excepter
First Nation
Jane
Dent May
Panda Bear
Peppermints
Ariel Pink
Prince Rama
Rings
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


Campfire Songs

Avey Tare
Dave Portner AKA Avey Tare was born in Baltimore County, Maryland on April 24th in the year of 1979. He moved to New York City in 1997 where he resides to this day (in south Brooklyn). Though he spends most of his time writing songs and producing sounds (usually in the group Animal Collective) he also is an intense record collector, film fanatic, book head, friend, and traveler. It's from these things primarily that Mr. Portner gets his inspiration, still striving to blend sounds and discover musical territory that seems unfamiliar. His favorite animals are the otter and crocodile. The later has played a big role in his newest record.

Paw Tracks Releases:


Down There

Avey Tare & Kría Brekkan
Avey Tare is Dave Portner of Animal Collective and Kría 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 Kría 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:


Wastered	Roll up b/w Drool	Load Blown


Repo

Kría Brekkan
Kría Brekkan is the alter ego of Icelandic musician Kristin Anna Valtysdottir, formerly of the band múm.

Paw Tracks Releases:


Uterus Water

Eric Copeland
Eric Copeland currently lives and works in NYC, NY. He makes music with Bjorn Copeland and Aaron Warren in Black Dice. And he makes music alone as well. He has been doing this for sixteen years now and covered a vast territory in the musical landscape along the way. He is grateful to still be around and jamming new ideas for audiences around the world.

Paw Tracks Releases:


Hermaphrodite	Alien In a Garbage Dump	Alien In a Garbage Dump (CD version)

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.

Black Beach	Presidence

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

Dent May (facebook page)
Dent May writes and records homemade pop music in Mississippi, where he was born in 1985. He began songwriting at age 12. The following year, he started a band called Flood, who covered Creed and 311 and sold homemade cassettes to classmates. In high school, heavily influenced by Elvis Costello and The Cars, Dent fronted a power-pop band called The Rockwells. Feeling like an outsider in Mississippi, he retreated to the Internet, where he spent his time soaking in pop music and culture from around the globe.

After dropping out of NYU film school, Dent founded Oxford, Mississippi's self-proclaimed "infotainment cult" Cats Purring. Since then, his musical endeavors have included a debut LP of ukulele tunes on Paw Tracks, dance recordings under the Dent Sweat moniker, and a mysterious unfinished psych-country rock opera called Cowboy Maloney's Electric City. He throws notorious DIY shows at his home, a former Boys & Girls club now deemed the Cats Purring Dude Ranch.

Recent singles on Forest Family and Paw Tracks have found Dent abandoning the ukulele in favor of cosmic synths, funky guitars, analog drum machines, loopy bass lines, and massive vocal harmonies. He played all the instruments on his new album "Do Things, which was recorded at the Dude Ranch and in a friend's rural cabin by a cotton field. He has described the album as "Pet Sounds for the Smirnoff Ice generation" and "a wedding reception band on acid" via his Twitter account. "Do Things" will be released by Paw Tracks on 6/12/2012.

Paw Tracks Releases:


The Good Feeling Music of...	Fun seven inch	Do Things	Warm Blanket

Panda Bear (facebook page)
Near the end of 2010, Panda Bear (a/k/a Noah Lennox of Animal Collective) will release his fourth full-length album, Tomboy. To say the disc is highly-anticipated would be a slight understatement. After the crowning glory of his previous solo album, 2007's Person Pitch (which not only topped Pitchfork's Album of the Year charts but also ranked in the top ten of their Albums of the Decade), Panda Bear reconvened his Animal Collective brethren and followed it up with 2009's Merriweather Post Pavilion, which also found its rightful place atop innumerable magazine and blog polls come year’s end.

Through it all, Lennox has remained resilient in following his singular vision and voice. "I've definitely traversed some kind of mind field the last year or so and it hasn’t always been pleasant or easy," Lennox says. "But it's been more a positive irritant than anything else." Tomboy proves, above all else, that he’s risen to the challenge and surpassed (as well as sidestepped) all expectations. And in following up Person Pitch, Panda Bear has again taken to releasing the album as a batch of separate singles first, for labels like Kompakt, Fat Cat, Paw Tracks, and Domino. "Doing the singles helps me focus on every song and also helps me move along in the process."

Also part of the process was moving past the gear that informed the dense sonic tapestries of Person Pitch and MPP: "I got tired of the severe parameters of using samplers. Thinking about Nirvana and the White Stripes got me into the idea of doing something with a heavy focus on guitar and rhythm." Favoring a darker, more-streamlined sound on Tomboy, Lennox went for a more visceral and direct approach, though that rock tendency was offset by another old influence on Lennox: "With regards to where I am with Tomboy, I’m definitely reliving middle school and all the Baltimore R and B radio we used to ingest."

It lends itself to the paradox of the title itself. Lennox explains: "A lot of the songs are about something that's in conflict with itself, so the image of a 'tomboy' has become the overseeing figure as far as the group of songs go." It might even exemplify the conflict of Panda Bear himself: underground and experimental in his approach to sound, he also strives to craft gorgeous pop for the widest audience possible. With Tomboy, he's attained his greatest balance between the two extremes yet.

Paw Tracks Releases:


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


Live at ZDB, Lisbon digital-only	Take Pills b/w Bonfire of the Vanities	Tomboy b/w Slow Motion


"You Can Count On Me" b/w "Alsatian Darn"	"Last Night at the Jettye" b/w "Drone"	Tomboy

Peppermints
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)

Prince Rama(website)
“What the hell is that?” is a question pretty familiar to the controversial Brooklyn band Prince Rama. The answer is far from simple; sisters Taraka and Nimai Larson have lived in ashrams, worked for utopian architects, written manifestos, delivered lectures from pools of fake blood, conducted group exorcisms disguised as VHS workouts and have now finished inventing an apocalypse on which to base their new pseudo-compilation album, Top Ten Hits of the End of the World, comprised of ten singles “channeled” from fictional deceased pop bands. Their often unpredictable live shows incorporate elements of psychedelic ceremony, performance art, and dancefloor initiation rite, and when Animal Collective’s Avey Tare discovered them in a Texas dive bar in 2010, they were equipping the audience with handmade shoes clad with broken chimes. They signed to Paw Tracks shortly thereafter, and have since released Shadow Temple and Trust Now, which peaked at #3 and #6 on the Billboard New Age Charts respectively. In only four years, Prince Rama have released a prolific six albums and toured in four of the seven continents, recording with members of Animal Collective and Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti. Taraka recently published a manifesto on the “NOW AGE” that puts forth Prince Rama’s aesthetic and metaphysical philosophies, which has been met with both hatred and praise from art and music worlds alike. One thing is certain: whatever it is they are, Prince Rama are constantly breaking the mold of what is acceptable to forge a dizzying universe that is wholly their own.

Paw Tracks Releases:


Top Ten Hits of the End of the World	Shadow Temple	Trust Now

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)
The creative force behind Tickley Feather, Annie Sachs, entered into music as inauspiciously as most; making friends with other neophytes who were looking for a creative way to spend their time. What differentiated Annie from her initial partners was an idiosyncratic and preternaturally bizarre voice and vocal style. Annie's abilities quickly made her a sought after member of many bands though she was essentially un-malleable to most of the conventional songwriting presented to her. Annie chose to forge her own path and selected the Tickley Feather nom de guerre in 2004 to attempt to define her own sound and use it to express her truly singular and unique perspective. Her initial recordings on a "gently used" four track were able to transcend the lo-fi ghetto by eschewing preciousness in favor of bizarreness.

Around this time Annie was invited to participate in a film by director Danny Perez was preparing on behalf of Animal Collective. The group became interested in her music and invited her to release an album on their Paw Tracks imprint. The self titled album was released by Paw Tracks in the spring of 2008. It was preceded by a critically heralded split 7 inch with Serpents of Wisdom and another split 7 inch with Bermuda Triangles from Richmond, Virginia released on the CNP label.

After many years in Philadelphia, Annie decided she should consolidate her energies in her former home of Virginia. In a search for isolation Annie retreated to rural Virginia earlier this year and moved into a dilapidated farmhouse which had been annexed by a school for the deaf and the blind. She wished to remake the mold that she had cast with her previous work and was able to create what was to become her new album Hors d'oeuvres in an environment sympathetic to her aesthetic. Liberated by solitude and firmly entrenched with her young boy Aiden, Annie is now able to gain a new perspective and find a new direction.

Paw Tracks Releases:


Tickley Feather	Hors D'Oeuvres