Interview With Croz Boyce (Dave Portner / Avey Tare and Brian Weitz / Geologist of Animal Collective)

Got to chat with the amazing legends Dave Portner (Avey Tare) and Brian Weitz (Geologist) of Animal Collective about their new project, Croz Boyce!

Croz Boyce's self-titled record is later this week via Domino. Link.

Photos via Charlie Boss.

Without further ado...

Croz Boyce by Charlie Boss.

Synth History I know you guys have been friends since you were teenagers. What was it like the day you first met?

Brian Weitz: First day of 9th grade, late summer 1993. The lore of the Grateful Dead shirt is more or less accurate. I was new in town having moved from Philly to Baltimore that summer when I was 14. I arrived a week before school started and spent the time going to a new doctor, new barber, things like that. I knew one kid at my new school and he agreed to meet me out front on the first day and show me where to go and introduce me to a few people before classes started. I was appropriately nervous and probably pretty quiet. Dave was probably quiet too. The kid we knew in common thought we’d get along, though it wasn’t solely because I was wearing a Grateful Dead shirt; he just knew we both liked music a lot and that it was a big part of our identities. I can’t remember much beyond shaking hands or saying what’s up. I actually remember our second conversation more, which was a day or two later when we were standing outside of a classroom waiting to be let in. I had spent my final night in Philly seeing Steve Miller Band and I was wearing the tour shirt on this particular day (side note: one thing AC has in common is a shared fondness for the Steve Miller Band. Coincidentally when we met Noah, he would always set up his drums and warm up by playing the beat to "Take The Money and Run.” Shoulda known then that it was meant to be.) Anyway Dave asked about the Steve Miller shirt and when I said I had seen them over the summer, he told me he had also seen them play with the Dead. I had other friends whose older siblings had been to a Dead show, but Dave was the first person our age that I met who had seen them live, and gone without parents driving him there. That blew my mind. I remember he was wearing a Lemonheads shirt that day - the green one with the cow on it - so we talked about liking It’s A Shame About Ray. That Fall was an interesting time in music because kids our age had their music ideas/identities heavily influenced by Nirvana and the grunge/alternative explosion while we were in middle school. And a lot of the bands that were swept up in that were about to release their post-hype albums. Lemonheads and Pearl Jam were the big two I can remember. And then when they came out that felt a little like a let down. Also being 14 around that time it was a big deal to be a poser and those albums were maybe too popular for kids like us to even have honest opinions about without being influenced by the discourse. But that moment of still paying attention to BIG alternative, while also being curious about the underground, led us to buy the No Alternative comp which was how we discovered Pavement.

Dave Portner: I think I would pretty much tell it the same way. I can only really remember a brief hello on the day we met. I can add that I was the first to make the next move and ask brian if he wanted to go to the mall with me, which became something we did often and which included a trip to The Wall looking for new music. Making that call was actually a very important hurdle for me to cross. I suffered from extreme shyness for most of my life and while that action didn't cure the problem it was helpful for me then to realize I could make new friends and that being outgoing and taking some chances paid off sometimes. Our friendship progressed pretty quickly from there. We were in our own duo world on the soccer team as well because of our intense interest in music. So I think that also factored into our bond because of more forced time spent together.

Synth History What inspired / led to this latest collaboration?

Brian Weitz: A couple Animal Collective projects in the last decade ended up just being the two of us, specifically Meeting of the Waters EP and a track called “Brown Thrasher” on an Audubon Society comp. Both of those relied mostly on Dave playing guitar and me playing synth. Meeting of the Waters was for a tv series so it felt more or less siloed as that, but when we did “Brown Thrasher” we felt like we wanted to keep going with that sound. It was during the pandemic, around the same time we remotely did the Time Skiffs LP with full AC. When AC stopped touring at the end of 2022, Dave and I had a conversation about wanting to stay busy and work with each other on projects that felt organic and inspired regardless of any kind of release plan. First we did the soundtrack to an art installation by Swannatopia called Bug Mall as our other alter-side-AC duo project New Psycho Actives. We enjoyed that so much that we wanted to do something else right away and Dave suggested returning to the Brown Thrasher formula idea.

Dave Portner: There's a side of brian's and my music taste and listening experience that isn't really fulfilled in other stuff we've done with AC. It's present but also always mixed in with Noah and Josh's ideas and tastes. Brian and I have spent many hours in a dorm room or outside just listening to stuff like Charlemagne Palestine, Wendy Carlos or Different kinds of sound tracks like The Hired Hand by Bruce langhorn. Different kinds of textural or environmental music that combines acoustic and synthesized sounds has always been really inspiring and fun to listen to together. So it seemed like a good time to think about and make a record like that. Brian's been messing around with some different eastern acoustic instruments and also a lot of mod synth stuff and I was playing a lot of acoustic guitar at the time because I had one on tour with me for my 7s tour. So it was something I was doing a lot of in my "off" time. That all carved the way for making this record.

Synth History What have been some of your recent go-to pieces of gear ?

Brian Weitz: It might be pretty well publicized at this point but hurdy-gurdy has been my go-to instrument for the last five years. I actually think synth players - and specifically monophonic synth players - are uniquely suited to playing one. The fretting keys are laid out like a classic chromatic keyboard so it’s basically a medieval keytar. In terms of electronic synths, I’m a big fan of the Make Noise Morphagene module. I used it's sound on sound capabilities to effect Dave’s acoustic guitar on a lot of the Croz Boyce songs. Other than that, I borrowed my studio mate’s Prophet 600 for this record and that is probably the most used synth on there next to my eurorack stuff.

Synth History What have been some mainstay pieces of gear throughout your career?

Brian Weitz: Roland SH-2 synthesizer. I got one for free from a summer camp in the mid-90’s. They had no idea what it was. We’ve been using it since high school and used it on every AC album through Centipede Hz. It’s done double duty both as a synth and an fx processor. It’s been in the basement for a while though because I got too familiar with it and on the road I need to recall presents more than I used to.

Dave Portner: For me it's the Roland Juno 60. It remains my favorite synth to play. I've had the same one since 1998.

Synth History Can you recount any ‘happy accidents’ in the studio and what they led to?

Brian Weitz: I’m not really an edibles person and Dave knows this so when we were mixing this record, we kept all the gummies out of the kitchen and in the control room. But one bag of chocolates got left by the snacks and I probably swallowed 70-100mg at once without knowing it. We didn’t realize what I’d done until many hours later as I wondered why the house looked tiled at a 45 degree angle and felt possessed by evil spirits. Appropriately it was the night we mixed "Father Karras", though everything after the first minute or so had to be mixed by Dave while I laid down in the dark, so saying “we mixed” is generous.

Dave Portner: That is a pretty good accident. I really thought Brian had lost his mind. Another happy accident is that there ended up being an organ at Out There studios where we mixed that we ended up using on abundant river zap and it totally transformed the song for me. That wasn't something we had planned on being in the song.

Synth History What is one memory you have from playing a show that you look back on fondly now, but it was stressful in the moment?

Brian Weitz: A lot of shows are stressful, especially the big ones, or the off the wall ones where we know we’re not going to play to expectations. I guess I’ll go with the first thing that comes to mind which is not off the wall in the least, but more just classic tour… we were touring with Atlas Sound in the UK in 2008. This was our first proper bus tour. We had been on buses before, but as an opening band or just for like a few days when we needed the driving help overnight. This was the first start to finish bus tour and we rented one that was pretty old and in bad shape. We played somewhere in England and then the next day we were supposed to catch a ferry to Dublin for a show that night, but the bus broke down. I can’t remember if it broke down twice that day? Maybe once before the ferry and once after? Either way, we were going to be very late and the venue had a hard curfew so they said we had to cancel the gig. As we were broken down on the side of the road, the promoter called and said another venue would let us move the show to their space and we could start and play as late as we wanted. That still didn’t solve the bus problem so they sent vans out to get us and our gear and drive us back to Dublin while they spread the word about a new show. We got to town after 11pm, loaded on stage and started the gig around or after midnight. Place was packed and vibes were incredible. Very stressful day and very late night, but I remember at the end of it all we were really proud we pulled it off and played such a great set.

Dave Portner: As Brian said, a lot of shows, especially in our very early days, were stressful. Lots of equipment breaking. Playing in non traditional type venues etc. There was one show we played in Hyeres, France at this ruins. It was the Midi Festival. It was an incredible space. Unfortunately Noah and some of our crew had gotten food poisoning at a previous show on the tour. He couldn't eat anything and was getting sick like every half hour or something like that. We really didn't want to cancel but we also didn't know if he could make it through the set. He wanted to go with it and so we did. Definitely turned out to be a fun set in a beautiful space and we made it through.

Synth History How do you approach collaborating together versus your own solo work?

Brian Weitz: There are two main things I’ve learned which is you have to leave space for someone else to fill, and then even more importantly, you have to have patience and openness when they fill it. Solo work can help build confidence and sometimes that can come at the expense of trust. In collaborative work that is the most important thing so I try and really keep that in mind and examine my reactions from a neutral place if possible. Like are my reactions based on the fact that an idea is not mine, or musically has an effect on one of my ideas. That ego is something you always have to check in a band, but as I said, solo work can embolden it and you have to work harder to keep it in check.

Dave Portner: For me it's become a lot harder to do things completely solo because I don't really enjoy the over-thinking that can go into working alone. It is (like brian said) definitely a good practice in tempering the ego to work with someone. And I really enjoy the aspect of playing in regards to or off of what someone else is playing. Simply put, playing music with people is more appealing to me at the moment. This situation is a little different because Brian and I never actually played in the room together. But we still had to work with and play into existing material. I think because brian and I share a lot of the same tastes, it was all pretty natural. But there are still moments where we don't agree and communicating that in the best possible way is definitely something you learn along the way. It's a good skill to have in any relationship really.

Synth History If you could recommend one album for someone to listen to at least once in their lifetime (apart from your own), what would it be and why?

Brian Weitz: Not sure how you don’t overthink this one. We were lucky enough to be at that Daft Punk Coachella set in 2006 and I felt that night it would be something people would talk about for decades. It just came up with some friends the other day in fact. It’s hard to explain why it was as great as it was, but a big part of it was how unified the audience experience felt. It was one of those times you really lost the boundaries of yourself and felt part of something really massive and positive. And I got separated from the other guys in AC so I was in a sea of strangers. For that reason, I’d say Daft Punk Alive 2007. It’s not that performance from Coachella but is pretty close. Maybe it allows me to transport to that feeling again because I was at the original set, but I think/hope it transcends that. We need unifying moments like that nowadays.

Dave Portner: I'm not sure I could pick a specific record but It would probably be a hip hop record from the 1990s. Like something by Gang Starr or Tribe Called Quest or Beastie Boys. When people started sampling it suddenly brought all these musical styles together and with that also comes all of the culture and roots that come with any specific style of music (when you really dive into it). So you can hear rock and rap and drone and cuban rhythms and turkish music etc etc all playing together in one song at times or at least on one record. Seems like a good way of opening up someone's mind to the many possibilities and paths that music can take.

Synth History What is inspiring you the most right now?

Brian Weitz: My garden and my dog. Not necessarily all positive to be honest. It’s almost like forced inspiration because you have to deal with other life forms that don’t communicate in the same way but you all still need something fro each other. It helps to inspire acceptance I guess.

Dave Portner: The Spring Blooms for sure. I love the Spring ephemerals around the Blue Ridge and Smokies areas. Miles of inspiration. They are amazing to look at but they also say "get up and get out. It's time to grow and change and bloom. We do it every year and so should you" . They are magic right here on Earth.

Synth History Exclusive.

Interview conducted by Danz.

Photos by Charlie Boss courtesy of Domino.