Collected Animals

During my time off work over the past few years, I've been re-listening to the entire discography of AC and trying to obtain every single piece of music by the boys. Every album, every distinctly unique live version of those songs (kind of a tenuous definition), live jams, B-sides, demos, remixes, collaborations, compilation tracks, etc.

As I collected these tracks, I noticed that some of them were in poor condition, and I thought it would be great to try and preserve and appreciate them in a more favorable way. Since I have OCD and have been working in audio engineering for about 15 years, I decided to take it upon myself to do some work in this regard. My primary objective was to make them sound closer to their studio counterparts and remove any issues in the recordings, such as distortion and unintended noises.

Below is a list of projects that I have been working on thus far and what I've done to the recordings (and just for convenience in notation, I've reduced harmonic excitation/saturation used in aims to fill in the voids created by low-bit MP3 encoding to just simply "harmonics" and stereo correction as shorthand for re-balancing and whatnot). Also, I know it's a bit of a crime but some of them are unfortunately mastered from MP3s, though I did my best to source everything from it's highest quality source possible. The resulting 320Kbps MP3s should sound nearly indistinguishable from my mastered lossless files (though I can provide FLAC upon request).

I am also opening myself up for requests to master your personal works as well. If you have anything you want to be mastered from a stereo WAV file or even mixed from stems and mastered, feel free to hit me up. Willing to accommodate people of any income level!

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Panda Bear Live at Melbourne Recital Centre (12-13-2018) [MP3] [FLAC]
Wanted to thank roopn for commissioning this one (and thanks to Enn Eye for recording it in the first place). Panda delivers great versions of the Buoys songs, and I really love this rendition of "Part of the Math" in particular.

Panda Bear & Rusty Santos - Live at United Bamboo, NY, (??-??-2004) [LINK]
The update to Panda Bear & Rusty Santos' collaboration for the NY fashion show for United Bamboo. Separated the instruments which allowed much better positioning and denoising results. Restored frequencies, evened out volume, enhanced stereo feel, etc. I'm still not totally sure I love how the drum-heavy part turned out, so if it doesn't sound good to y'all, I might make one more fix. Hope you dig it

Animal Collective - Chocolate Girl from BBC Radio 6 [LINK]
Added harmonics, improved EQ, added stereo width, restored dynamics, side-chained the bass to the kick so it sounds more thumping, re-balanced instruments, and added a little magic dust to the ending. Enjoy!

Avey Tare - Live at Folk Medicine (06-10-2020): [LINK]
Fixed volume jump, split the songs, EQ, frequency restoration, stereo enhancement

Avey Tare, DEAKIN and Kria Brekkan (Live at Glasslands (01-20-2008): [LINK]
Remixed instrument balance, EQing, minimizing crowd noise, stereo enhancement

Avey Tare - Song for Jerome (Live at The Kitting Factory): [LINK]
Stem separation, volume leveling, limiting, EQ, and condensed the intro slightly

Panda Bear - Guys Eyes (Demo Live at Governor's Island): [LINK]
Used stem separation technology to do EQing, width-adjustment, compression, and de-verbing to each individual element and make a mix that sounds close to being a studio recording.

Deakin Piano Jams: [LINK]
Most of his piano performances from Instagram from the past few months. Processed with EQ, compression, and tasteful stereo field simulation

AC Live at Music Box Village, LA (03-16-18): [LINK]
Posted this awhile ago, but basically it's the two full video recordings of the event placed into a stereo field close to how they were positioned in the crowd, and then matched with EQ, compression, and the bass was centered a bit. You'll find this one linked in the main live show archive as well.

Panda & Deakin Live in Tokyo (02-29-04): [LINK]
Declipping, gain, EQ, compression, stereo correction, harmonics, track splitting

AC Live on DubLab (07-07-2003): [LINK]
Declipping, gain, EQ, stereo correction, harmonics, track splitting

AC Live at Othermusic (08-16-2004): [LINK]
Made this one a long time ago, but I think it still sounds alright. Did some EQ, compression, stereo correction, and tried to remove some of the mic handling and splitting errors.

AC Live on KVRX (07-11-03): [LINK]
AC Live on BBC 3 (05-24-04): [LINK]
AC Live on BBC 1 (11-01-05): [LINK]
AC Live on KEXP (09-14-07): [LINK]
AC Live on Spinning on Air (07-30-04): [LINK]
These radio sessions already sounded pretty good, just made sure to add back harmonics, adjust EQ, stereo width and maximized the volume

Automine - Paddington Band: [LINK]
Denoised, brought up levels, EQ, declicked, limited

Geologist - The Sirens: [LINK]
Removed the speaking in the intro and outros, EQ, denoising, harmonics

Avey and Kría Live at The Unitarian Church: [LINK]
Denoising, harmonics, stereo width, extensive click and pop removal, EQing to remove harshness, and mild reformatting to set to improve listening experience (mostly removed the banter and false starts)

Avey - Live at Echo, CA [LINK]
Avey - Live with Bjorn Copeland (AKA Angeleno Jam) [LINK]
Avey - Live with Deakin on Porch Life [LINK]
Avey - Live with Deradorrian at Family, CA [LINK]
Different live sets but all basically some form of gain, EQ, compression/leveling, harmonics and stereo correction

AC Assorted: [LINK]
Geo Assorted: [LINK]
Deakin Assorted: [LINK]
Panda Assorted: [LINK]
Avey Assorted: [LINK]
Automine Assorted: [LINK]
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All the non-copyrighted recordings from the band and their solo projects as listed below

Thank you for this. I've yet to listen to Deakin's piano streams so I'll be starting there!

No problem. Yeah they're pretty good! I'm excited to see if he does some sort of studio release of something like that.

Also updated the main post with the Othermusic remaster I did years ago, and of the Panda Bear / Rusty Santos collab. Speaking of collabs, I'm also trying to figure if I should split the live Avey collaboration sets, but they're so long, and the one with Deakin is particularly languid and hard to separate. I know I probably should though.

Also, my white whale right now is getting a high-res (96khz/24bit) rip of "Pullhair Rubeye" on vinyl so when you speed correct the sped-up songs, they'll actually have frequencies to bring down into the audible register. Unfortunately my record player is broken right now, so this one will take awhile.

Amazing project, I'm very excited for this.

Awesome stuff! Can't wait to hear some of your improvements

Glad people appreciate it

Added the Geologist "The Sirens" performance, Avey's collab with Deradorrian, and a huge collection of various non-copyrighted recordings from the band and their solo projects. Also organized the overall structure and clarity of the post.

massive. listening to Noah's Ark...could stuff

thank you for your service

this is great-- thank you!

Thanks for these angelic chaos!
Checking out the mixed music box recording, for some reason I never did at the time. loving it!
And I usually don't go for fan comps, but dl'd the geo assorted because I was lax collecting all the bits and pieces of his from obrien system etc.

It's been a while since I've listened to these older Deakin live recordings and forgot how much I loved them. Perhaps worth noting that "II" is actually an early and very different ambient/drone version of Golden Chords!

wow thank you so much for sharing! excited to have split track versions of Noah's Ark, Together, and Dublab shows. I'm excited to hear what they'll sound like after all your effort

It's been a while since I've listened to these older Deakin live recordings and forgot how much I loved them. Perhaps worth noting that "II" is actually an early and very different ambient/drone version of Golden Chords!

Damn I had no idea

Great work. Revisiting Music Box. I hope the band hears this, and that it lights a fire under their rears to release it in some form. They said there’s a soundboard recording, right? Cecil into DownDownDown... damn! Thank you, Angelic Chaos. What an incredible show.

listened to the Noah's Ark and Dublab's shows so far, both sound much crisper than I remember them being. great work on the remasters for those!

forgot how cool the Dublab version of "Always You" is

The remastered Lisbon Zoo is a godsend. Stellar work

Thanks for the kind words everyone. About to apply the Avey patch and split more performances very soon!

holy shit you made the PB & Rusty performance sound almost studio-quality! excited to hear other boots spruced up like these!

forgot how much i love do right. this is amazing, thank your for your work

edit: oh good heavens sleeping factory sounds incredible.

This feels like the start of a god tier project.

Together and the AC Assorted stuff are fantastic.

Can't wait to get stuck into the rest!

Thank you. X

Just want to know before downloading
What are the Deakin untitled songs? I'm assuming those are from the 2018 tour.
Which one is "Shine?" and "You Can Feel?" are they
1. The 5/4 droney song with keyboard and odd beat only "riiiiiight or wrroongg, you know [something]"
2. The guitar only song that sounds really haunted and cursed
3. The jangling song with "abahbahbahbahbababa" african sample

What is "It still matters to Me?" is that a unofficial title or something?

Also nothingmaster what is Do Right? I've never heard of that before and I don't see it up there. I'm stumped, sorry. I'm a very much completist to the deep cuts, and I thought I had it all down

It's one of the Noah's Ark fan titles.

Yeah I should have done better with naming the untitled Deakin tracks. They're all from the early bootlegs since I assume he might go in a finalize some of the newer song he's been debuting. And some were kind of hard to distinguish, as with the case sound science mentioned earlier where "II" is a demo of "Golden Chords"

It Still Matters to Me is the opening track on side two of Transverse Temporal Gyrus slowed way down, but I also remastered it from the stems that come with TTG and made it it's own separate song like a few people were doing around the time those came out.

And yeah, Do Right is just a fan name for track three in the Noah's Ark set. I was getting tired of seeing so many "Untitled"s

Hey Angelic, how did you go about remastering Sleeping Factory? It's an astonishing transformation

I don't have memory of how I remastered every one of them, but I kind of start with the standard of removing unneeded noise, so lo-cut everything up to 40hz since it's just vocals and guitars. If the MP3 artifacting is really bad I'll also remove the "sound crystals'' that occur when the encoder thinks there's something worth preserving in the range above it's normal cap (MP3's usually discard everything above 16khz unless there is a strong disruption in that range and then it filters out stuff in the middle momentarily and this can happen accidentally causing audible bleeps in that area). So I do a steep cutoff that rolls off above 16khz as well to eliminate those. Then I duplicate the signal and apply tape saturation to the other while cutting out all the frequencies under the cap in the duplicated/saturated signal, and combine them so it will have filled that gap of frequencies caused by the MP3 cap. Sometimes I'll leave the tape saturation in the whole mix if it's sounding too digital, and use additional "harmonic exciters" (like the one in iZotope oZone) to add more crispiness and airiness. Then I denoise background noise if needed, but there usually isn't any on radio performances. I then compare the EQ of the tracks to ones with similar instrumentation (in this case Sung Tongs) and adjust it to sound similar. Finally I compress and I probably used a pretty strong tape compressor since they affect master mixes quite nicely. Then comes the final mastering touches like checking stereo width which I believe sounded pretty good initially, final EQing, limiting/bringing up the volume to somewhere between -14ish and -9 LUFS based on official releases from the same time, adding fade ins or outs. And that's usually it if there isn't noises that require manual spectral in-painting to remove (like bumps, pops, crowd noise, etc)

Thank you for the info!!!

That's really interesting, never known anything about 'harmonic exciters'.

About to upload a bunch of new stuff soon. Remasters of a ton of radio shows, splits of live sets, and a few other goodies like Automine and the Avey assorted tracks.

Also I'm doing a pretty extensive remastering of the "Live at First Unitarian Church" set with Avey and Kria. Was wondering if anyone knew the untitled Kira tracks? Never given her much of a listen so I'm not as well versed in where to look for them.

I don’t think those Kria tracks ever showed up anywhere else. I think I’ve listened to all her solo stuff and none of it matches what was played in that show (also those tracks are incredible)

I’m basically on the edge of my seat waiting for whatever you post next, you’ve gotten me back into listening to old AC boots and I’m so here for it

About to upload a bunch of new stuff soon. Remasters of a ton of radio shows, splits of live sets, and a few other goodies like Automine and the Avey assorted tracks.

Also I'm doing a pretty extensive remastering of the "Live at First Unitarian Church" set with Avey and Kria. Was wondering if anyone knew the untitled Kira tracks? Never given her much of a listen so I'm not as well versed in where to look for them.

Was losing steam removing every click and pop from the Unitarian Church show. Had to manually paint out 100s of them. But stuff should be up later tonight. Hope you guys are happy!

Recent additions to main post:
AC Live on KVRX (07-11-03)
AC Live on BBC 3 (05-24-04)
AC Live on BBC 1 (11-01-05)
AC Live on KEXP (09-14-07)
Avey Live at Echo, CA
Avey Live with Bjorn Copeland
Avey Live with Deakin on Porch Life
Avey Live with Deradorrian at Family, CA (Patched because it was EQ'd poorly)
Avey and Kria Live at Unitarian Church
Automine - Paddington Band
Automine Assorted (Basically just early "Penny Dreadfuls" and "Bleak Midwinter")
Avey Tare Assorted
AC Assorted (Patched because "From a Beach" and "Tuvin (Panda Version)" were wrong)
Notes about remixing Oddsac yourself

All the live sets have been split to the best of my ability, and honestly, the Bjorn set is still not sounding great. There's something wonky about it's recording I still just can't suss out how to fix. And what I call patches which are just updated files from the initial remasters.

But yeah that might be it for awhile. The Avey/Kria set took a lot out of me, but its pretty glorious.

Hope you all enjoy!

(And sorry for all the edits mods)

THANK YOU you are a legend

I don't even know where to begin with so much gold but I can't wait to dive into these

absolute legend good gravy

these have been sick as hell to listen to, rediscovering these rarities is like visiting old memories since someone way back when on the forum made a whole "album" out of a lot of these tracks that i used to have on repeat. from a beach, the other music set, and the deakin's old live stuff especially hit hard. thanks so much angelic

unitarian church is so special. sounds superb.

did you intend for the Padington Band link to link to Automine Assorted?

Wow. That Unitarian Church... Amazing. Thank you so much.

did you intend for the Padington Band link to link to Automine Assorted?

Ha no, the post must have just been getting unwieldy. Fixed it now.

Glad people are enjoying the work

thanks for fixing!

Also I noticed I had a few rarities that aren't in your "assorted", including an untitled 1-minute PB track that sounds like a Young Prayer outtake, "Principe Real" from CHz radio, and two Avey tracks feat. Deradoorians also from CHz radio. I'm assuming you left out "In the City That Reads" due to copyright reasons. let me know if you want any of these!

Angelic Chaos, this is incredible! Thank you so much!