Hocus Pocus

Album: Painting With (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • This features John Cale, whose early experimental drone-laden music was a big influence in his work with the Velvet Underground. Animal Collective's Avey Tare explained John Cale's contribution to Uncut magazine: "My sister's been working for him for the past year and a half doing projections and visuals. We had this string-sounding sample, but the quality of it was never satisfying. We talked about having string players come in. But the part had this droney mist to it that I feel fitted in with John's aesthetic. We asked him, and luckily he was down with the idea."
  • The song opens with an audio clip in which a radio host from the Los Angeles station KCRW talks about there being no dinosaurs on the highway. Brian "Geologist" Weitz explained to Billboard magazine: "Some people were like 'I don't understand what that dinosaur sample is' and that was kind of the point. The radio host was transitioning from talking about dinosaurs, maybe how much money Jurassic World made, and then talking about traffic. We were listening to it going to the studio and heard it and thought, 'Whoa.' We knew if we took that in isolation it would be a funny thing. So we looked at the time on the clock and when we got to the studio I sent an email to our manager and said, 'She said this sentence on KCRW at this time and we want it.'"

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