Animal Collective’s Brian Weitz Discusses Geologist’s ‘A Shaw Deal’ and Beyond
‘A Shaw Deal’ is a meeting of two long-time friends, Geologist and DS, blending their distinct sounds into a harmonious whole. Their album ‘A Shaw Deal’ is slated for release on January 31, 2025, via Drag City.
The connection between Doug Shaw and Brian Weitz runs deep—rooted in years of friendship that began in the early days of Animal Collective and White Magic. Doug’s guitar playing, which first caught Brian’s attention on Instagram, became the catalyst for something much bigger. Inspired by Doug’s recordings, Brian began looping, tweaking, and transforming them, creating something entirely new. What started as a birthday gift evolved into a full album, resulting in a record that reflects the expansive, meditative energy Doug’s guitar has always invoked.
For Geologist, the thrill of music-making is a continuation of a journey. Brian echoes this sentiment: “Listening to records and going to shows are things that made me feel alive when I was younger, and they still do.” With ‘A Shaw Deal,’ both artists explore this shared history while also crafting something entirely new.
“We just need the right conduit for the energy to flow through.”
What drew you to Sleepy Doug Shaw’s work, and how did the initial collaboration come about? What was the process like in reworking the original folk guitar loops into this expansive sonic journey?
Brian Weitz: I’ve known Doug for over 20 years at this point. We come from the same group of friends and community of artists in New York that dates back to the early 2000s. I went away to Tucson, AZ for school for a year, and when I came back in the summer of 2003, I heard that Mira Bilotte had a new project called White Magic. I remember going to a club to see Dave and Noah play a ‘Sung Tongs’ set and running into the White Magic people there. They introduced me to Doug, who at the time was just a friend of theirs but later joined that band. He was an easy person to love from the get-go, based on his personality alone. I didn’t even know he played music, but it wasn’t long before I heard him play guitar and quickly became a fan. He later joined our close friends Gang Gang Dance on bass. He even toured solo with Animal Collective in early 2009 for the ‘Merriweather’ release shows in the UK/EU. He’s also played shows with Avey Tare and Deakin on some of their solo tours.
During the pandemic, someone told me he was doing a live show on Instagram one night, and my wife and I tuned in after the kids went to bed. We sat in the kitchen, having some wine while he played on the computer in front of us, and it was a beautiful and peaceful night—maybe the first one since the lockdown started. After that, I went through his Instagram, and whenever he posted short clips of his acoustic guitar playing, I played them off my phone and let them loop. It became my soundtrack around the house during the day while trying to manage my kids and their remote schooling. My wife is a teacher, so she was in a room on her own teaching her students, and I had to manage our kids while also trying to work on new AC music we had intended to record together in person (what became the Time Skiffs LP). I wanted to find a way to say thanks but do it in a public way that would maybe help other people turn on to his music. So my original plan was to make an episode of my NTS show that collaged together all of the videos I enjoyed. But that plan morphed into me wanting to make a more original-sounding collage out of the Instagram audio, where I would try and make original compositions using only that audio as source material.
Animal Collective had to cancel a tour in 2022, which left me with an unexpected month free, and at the end of it was Doug’s birthday. I decided that instead of making the collage for NTS, I would just make it for him and give it to him privately as a birthday present. So I picked some of my favorite posts that dated from when the virus was first identified in China to when things opened back up again, and loaded them into my modular sampler (Make Noise Morphagene). From there, I just played around until I found things I liked and layered and built until I had what sounded like a record.
The music in ‘A Shaw Deal’ has a sense of peacefulness and affirmation to it. Can you talk a bit about how you balance your experimental approach with Doug’s more traditional acoustic sound? Was there a moment when you felt that the project truly clicked into place?
There actually isn’t any of my modular in there in terms of generated synthetic sounds or additional samples. Every sound you hear on the album is Doug’s Instagram feed played straight off my phone, just in a very altered existence because it runs through a modular patch. I used the modular solely as a processor and compositional tool. That was part of the initial goal once I had the idea to make it a birthday present. I wanted to be able to say, “Here is a solo album of yours because every sound on it is you.” Ideally, I wanted to make it seem like an entirely different player or band was actually making the sound, but I didn’t know that when I started. I just started to play around with sound. It clicked for me after I had the first two layers for Route 9 Falls. It sounded to me like two electric guitar players on a live stage.
In terms of balance, I don’t know if I had a fixed idea. Especially when it comes to modular composition, I generally play around until I find a patch that self-generates into something that makes me lose track of time, and then I say, “Okay, now I just have to get out of the way.”
How do you approach working with loops—are you more interested in manipulating the sound itself, or in how the loops create a sense of narrative and emotional space throughout the piece?
I actually am trying very hard to move away from loop-based composition. I almost never do it anymore and haven’t for a long time. To some extent, modular patches can be cyclical, especially if you’re using a step sequencer with a limited number of steps without any uncertainty added into it, and that can give the impression of something being loop-based. That is different to me than making a sample-based loop where you’re just trying to find the right start and end points to loop something that is already created. If anything, this record might be the inverse of that because the starting point was a loop I had no control over. It was what Doug posted, and then the app looped it.
But other than the final song, ‘Avarice Edit,’ which I intentionally left fairly unaltered as a loop, I always used the loop as the starting point for change rather than the end goal of composition. It’s funny—even in talking to friends who follow Doug’s Instagram feed and have discussed my process for this album, they think a lot of the musical phrases and sequences on it are things Doug actually played, when in reality, it’s almost never the case. Sometimes the part of the Instagram loop I used is a split second, or one or two notes, and then I used pitch CV and a sequencer to build entirely new compositions.
When it comes to ‘A Shaw Deal,’ do you view it as a reflection of your creative journey, a celebration of Doug’s sound, or something else entirely?
It is absolutely a celebration of Doug. He is so talented, and the world needs more of his music. That is why I wanted to release it and also why I left the last song mostly unedited as just the loop from Instagram. I thought the final thought should inspire people to go search for more of his music rather than mine. But also, the idea of releasing it was secondary to giving him a gift with a positive message. For all I knew at the time, it might remain private. I left it up to him to decide if we could release it.
Overall, it was more of a spiritual exercise, both for him and for me, I guess. I heard through the friend grapevine that he was depressed he wasn’t going to have a solo album done by his birthday, and I felt like one already existed based on how much enjoyment I had just listening to the Instagram videos. So I wondered, does an actual record already exist in the sense that all the raw sound has already been created and made public through Instagram, but just not in a form that is recognizable as such? And then I wondered if I could apply my energy as a transformational process on that material to make a new form of what already existed, and then Doug could feel like he had indeed made a record by his birthday, even though he didn’t realize it. I think that message is valuable for everyone, which is why I hoped he would release it. Everything we need to create may already exist, and we just need the right conduit for the energy to flow through.
Animal Collective’s sound has always been incredibly eclectic, but ‘Isn’t It Now?’ feels like a step into even more experimental territory. What were some of the driving influences behind this album, and how did your approach to music-making evolve over the years to lead to this record?
‘Isn’t It Now?’ is interesting because, depending on who I talk to, it is either more experimental than our previous records or way more traditional and straightforward. ‘Time Skiffs’ is similar, which makes sense because they were written at the same time. I think I lean somewhere in the middle. I can hear the records as more traditional sounding, especially to an outside listener, but for me, the process was still very experimental because the way we approached the instrumentation was experimental for us.
For instance, having Dave play nothing but live bass for the most part might seem very traditional for many rock bands. But he’s never done it before, and we didn’t know how that would go, so the process is experimental even if the results don’t read as such. We all approached the live instrument side in that way. Even Noah’s drumming related to the kit in ways he never had before.
Animal Collective’s sound has gone through so many phases, but you all seem to have kept a deep sense of unity in your creative endeavors. How do you maintain that cohesive energy despite exploring so many sonic landscapes?
I’m not sure, but I’m glad you hear it that way. We do too, even though we don’t really try to define it. We acknowledge that there is something that will always make it sound like Animal Collective, even if on the surface it seems like it should sound different. We like that it’s something a bit mysterious and organic, and therefore trying to define it might defeat it.
With ‘Isn’t It Now?’ embracing both expansive and more intimate moments, do you feel that the album marks a new chapter for Animal Collective? How does it relate to your earlier work, if at all?
Mmm, I don’t know. I actually try to avoid thinking of our music or career in linear terms. Especially now that it’s fairly deep and new fans are entering into it with a massive amount of space to explore, it’s nice to see it more as a three-dimensional space where they can go as they please.
From an artistic perspective, what’s the most fulfilling part of working within Animal Collective versus working on your solo or collaborative projects like ‘A Shaw Deal?’
I think about this a lot, especially because I’m relatively new to it compared to my bandmates. I guess it’s a tradeoff. In solo work, you have all the space and control you need to express yourself. That is very fulfilling, and also scary because the responsibility is entirely on you. I think I’ve gained a lot of empathy for how my bandmates feel now in terms of solo/band work. I think it might be one of the more valuable things that have come out of doing solo work.
In terms of playing with Animal Collective, the thing you get that you don’t in solo work is surprise and companionship. My bandmates are much more musically intuitive than I am and bring lyrics and singing to the table. Having my mind blown by them is something I can’t really get in solo work.
Can you take us back to the beginning and talk about some of the first albums that shaped your direction? What role did your early surroundings, like Baltimore, play in developing your musical voice?
I always liked music, so it’s hard to know where to go back to. I guess if we’re talking about now, Syd Barrett/Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Pavement, Can, Silver Apples, Wendy Carlos, Sun City Girls, Climax Golden Twins.
“I had Pavement and Silver Jews posters on the wall.”
If we would step into your teenage room, what kind of records, fanzines, posters, et cetera, would we find there?
I had Pavement and Silver Jews posters on the wall. I had a setlist tacked to the wall from a Pavement show in 1995. It was still on the stage after they walked off, and I grabbed it. A couple of old horror movie posters like Creature from the Black Lagoon. Some Philadelphia Flyers memorabilia (my favorite hockey team). I wasn’t a regular fanzine reader but remember having some issues of Option, Bananafish, and The Wire. Spin, Magnet, Raygun.
We’ve heard that Animal Collective is a very close-knit group, almost like family. Beyond the music, what are some of your favorite hangout spots or activities that help nurture your creativity? Are there places or experiences that give you fresh inspiration for your work?
Well, we don’t live near each other anymore, so those places don’t really exist as much anymore. It’s more like we see each other when we tour and work. We can usually slip into the routine wherever we are. I visit Dave a few times a year, and one of my favorite places he introduced me to is actually Route 9 Falls in North Carolina. You can spend a whole day there. But sadly, it likely got destroyed in the recent hurricane.
In general, we do well outside. Josh and I like to scuba dive together. We’ve all spent a lot of time driving together too. It’s a simple pleasure. Dave and I toured together last year doing solo sets, and we could fit everything into his car. While playing shows was the main point of the trip, it also just felt like a good road trip with a good friend.
Is the speed of these recent releases a reaction to some kind of creative tension, or is it that you’ve finally found that zone where it’s not about time, but more about the moment of creation? What’s the interplay between these seemingly “back-to-back” releases and your internal need to push forward, without looking back?
As boring as it is to say, it’s really more of a pandemic thing. We had more than enough for an album, but since one of those songs was 20 minutes long, it wasn’t going to be as simple as an LP and an EP like we often did in the past. We intended to record them all at once but couldn’t because of the pandemic shutdown, so we only recorded the songs that we could do remotely at first. That became ‘Time Skiffs.’ Once we were able to record together in a studio, we did ‘Isn’t It Now.’ We always saw them as part of the same era and had been playing them live for a few years altogether, so it made sense to release them as close together as possible.
“I just like being part of the continuum of things that inspired me”
Is there anything about the way you make music now that surprises you compared to when you first started with Animal Collective?
Honestly, it’s hard to put myself back into my mindset of 25 years ago. Since it’s been a constant journey and progression was always the point, it feels natural to be in different places.
Your nickname “Geologist” came from a friend’s mix-up, but in a way, it makes sense. You’ve been digging through the sonic landscape, unearthing textures and sounds that most people wouldn’t think to touch. So let’s get real—do you ever feel like your music is more of an excavation? Are you digging for something that you can’t quite put into words, or are you just seeing what you can unearth when you let your gear go wild?
I’m way less of a loop digger than people think I am. When Animal Collective songs are built on loops and samples of other people’s music, that usually starts more with Noah or Dave. ‘Kinda Bonkers’ is one I did that way, but otherwise, I make samples out of non-musical sounds. I can’t put into words what makes a sound interesting. Sometimes you get the chills, I guess?
You’ve got this unique blend of being deeply cerebral—having studied environmental science and policy—and being an artist who practically lives in a sea of abstract sound. When you’re staring at a synthesizer, do you find yourself thinking in scientific terms, or does that side of you fade away when you plug in? Is there a marriage between the two worlds, or do they run in parallel, constantly crossing paths?
I don’t work in or study environmental issues anymore. That went out the window almost 20 years ago. I am fairly cerebral, though, and sometimes think I have to make sure that is not the end of my creative process. I can lean on conceptual or cerebral justifications as a crutch when, at the end of the day, it has to be fun or fulfilling to listen to on its own. That was one hurdle with ‘A Shaw Deal.’ The backstory is interesting on its own as conceptual art, but I hoped it would be a satisfying listen outside of that.
You’re part of a band that’s been around for over two decades now, experimenting, evolving, and still getting accolades for pushing the envelope. But beyond the studio, beyond the accolades, what’s kept you in the game? Is it about the music, the journey, or something else entirely—like the catharsis of watching sounds mutate into something people can feel? What drives Geologist, at the end of the day, when you strip away the performance and the albums?
I just like being part of the continuum of things that inspired me. Listening to records and going to shows are things that made me feel alive when I was younger, and they still do. Making those experiences for others feels important.
What are some of the latest records you’ve been listening to?
‘Skylla and Skyllumina’ by Ruth Goller have been in heavy rotation. I love the band Setting from North Carolina. Their ‘Live from Euology’ album is really great. I have a show on NTS called O’Brien System, which features a lot of my recent listenings.
Thank you for taking your time. Last word is yours.
Thanks so much for being interested! I haven’t been to Slovenia in 16 years. I last played in Ljubljana in 2008 with Animal Collective, I think? We had a great time and would love to come back someday!
Yeah, I was there, and it was truly a fantastic show. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Klemen Breznikar
Headline photo: Joshua Wildman
Geologist Linktr / Instagram / Bandcamp
Sleepy Doug Shaw Linktr / Instagram
Animal Collective Official Website / Facebook / Instagram / X / Bandcamp
Drag City Records Official Website / Facebook / Instagram / X / Bandcamp / SoundCloud
