he EP is based around the lead track, ‘People’ – a hypnotic, slow-lumbering roller that builds purposefully around a haze of shimmering guitar and piano, a see-sawing (almost Fall-like) bass riff, scuttling percussion, and dubby explosions. With little in the way of vocal lines, Avey Tare’s voice is instead utilised in a series of simplistic chanted affirmations, yelps and screams. ‘People’ is followed up by ‘Tikwid’ – a quirky, upbeat live favourite that motors on rollercoaster piano, cartoon-ish sampled squelches; bustling drum stabs and a runaway vocal chorus. It’s another killer track that sounds like noone else and fits snugly alongside the likes of ‘Grass’ or ‘The Purple Bottle’. The brief spectre of ‘My Favorite Colors’ conjures a haze of processed, haunted ballroom vocal warbles and slurred laughter, whilst the EP ends on a live recording of ‘People’ – recorded in Boston on the band’s US tour from Buffalo in march 2005, just prior to the recording of ‘Feels’. The first three tracks were recorded during those sessions in Seattle with producer Scott Colburn (Sun City Girls / Climax Golden Twins) in April 2005, and the material features significant contributions from violinist Eyvind Kang (Mr. Bungle / Sun City Girls / Arto Lindsay / Laurie Anderson / John Zorn), and Kristín Anna Valtysdóttir (Múm / Storsveit Nix Noltes), who plays piano. Taking inspiration from a wide range of sources without ever being reducible to a list of influences, Animal Collective are making challenging modern pop - music that defies easy classification or lazy pigeonholing. The mixture of electronics and traditional instrumentation, of songform and soundscape are integrated brilliantly and totally convincingly into a coherent, logical whole. Bubbling, rippling instrumental playing coheres into fluid song structures that seem to swell and ebb, building a throbbing, shimmering wall of sound. ‘People’ is available on both 12” and CD single formats ANIMAL COLLECTIVE “People” (FatCat) In their own cryptic, low-key way, the members of Animal Collective have had a triumphant few years. In 2005 they released a glorious album called “Feels”; its flickering experiments and lightheaded love songs (were they love songs?) unfolded without ever quite giving up their secrets. The album eventually sold about 40,000 copies in the United States; that’s an impressive number for a band like this. And late last year Animal Collective signed with Domino Records, one of the country’s leading indie-rock labels. Maybe that’s why this little CD sounds so exuberant. “People,” the new Animal Collective mini-album, was available for sale on the band’s recent tour, and some stores have been selling an import version; now FatCat is issuing a domestic pressing. The disc, which lasts about 19 minutes, is dominated by two versions of the title track. The studio version, a typically lush and detailed outtake from the “Feels” sessions, uses a simple bass line and a simpler lyric (“Yeah, ye-ah”) to build up momentum; eventually it explodes into a scream: “People! People!” And in the live version, you can hear some of those people screaming back. KELEFA SANNEH- NY times NY TIMES Live review of Webster Hall - 11/21 Animal Collective started its set on Sunday night at Webster Hall with rough scraping sounds, a loop of a shout and a swelling chordal drone. It was the latest variant of the drone that runs through great primitivist New York art-rock. And Animal Collective harnessed it in ways all its own: not the ominous fixations of the Velvet Underground, not the oceanic expanses of Sonic Youth, not the jittery stasis of TV on the Radio, but something at once joyful, obsessive and oddly pastoral. Animal Collective, from Brooklyn, makes albums that betray long, strange, manic hours in the studio, layering and tweaking sounds. On its most recent albums, "Sung Tongs" and the wonderful new "Feels" (Fat Cat), song forms emerge from the echoes and loops and speed-shifted voices. With song titles like "Grass" and "Bees," the lyrics, when they can be deciphered, place human interactions in a dream world of nature and geography that's equally likely to be bucolic or dangerous. The songs elapse on an individual time scale that has nothing to do with three-minute pop expectations. Often, the lyrics say their piece - or shriek it, in the excitable vocals of the band's guitarists, Avey Tare (a k a Dave Portner) and Deakin (Josh Dibb) - then drift into dizzying instrumental stretches populated with as many sounds as a forest (or a city block) on a summer night. Onstage, the four-member band could still construct elaborate electronic wildernesses, with Geologist (Brian Weitz) manipulating electronic gadgets to send voices and sounds ricocheting above and through the music. But it also pared down the music to a core that could be almost folksy - a chord or two, a skiffle-like drumbeat from Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), a voice with a melody that could have Appalachian roots - or insistently, relentlessly Minimalist. At times the music rocked, but just as often it heaved in slow-gusting crescendos, bounced like a horse-drawn cart, shimmered like a moonlit pond or bounded ahead like a newly unleashed dog. Behind the music was the attentive planning of a band determined to be warped and exploratory; imitators of the Animal Collective are likely to pride themselves on a madcap self-indulgence that's only half of the charm. Even as the Animal Collective's songs spiraled into soundscapes or melted themselves down, there was something logical and organic within: the rigor of the New York drone coupled with the whimsy of a band that has created its own habitats and laws of evolution. It's rock with a giddy intelligent design.- Jon Pareles