Animal Collective represent a particular challenge to the discerning critic. Though their latest full length, Merriweather Post Pavilion, is widely considered their most pop-oriented effort, it is still a drifting, ambient work that can be jarring to experience outside of its proper context. Even the album’s centerpoint, song-of-the-year-candidate “My Girls” is rarely heard in any social environment. As a band, they simply exist in their own universe and, until this masterful remix from Dam Funk slipped into my life, it seemed that to edit their work for the dancefloor would be to dilute its integrity. Animal Collective has traditionally harnessed a formula wherein breezy sixties Brian Wilson-esque harmonies are overlaid with eclectic ambience. Dam Funk’s edit of “Summertime Clothes” smokes out the tracks sunny, earnest melody and slaps it around with his trademark “funk,” for lack of a better word. The result is a masterpiece, check it out yourself.

Related posts:

1. Q&A: Dam-Funk
2. DâM-FunK & Master Blazter (LIVE)
3. Interview: Dam-Funk & Master Blazter
4. Dam-Funk “Mirrors”