Left: Greg Turkington, photo by Jason Bahr/Getty Images. Right: Animal Collective, photo by Hisham Bharoocha.
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Gregg Turkington’s remix of Animal Collective’s “Car Keys” has had me scratching my head since it came out last week. Who asked Turkington, who plays Tim Heidecker’s VHS-obsessed foil on the long-running web series On Cinema at the Cinema and has toured for decades as the foul-mouthed lounge lizard comedian Neil Hamburger, to rework the second song from the Baltimore avant-pop pioneers’ most recent studio album, Time Skiffs? What brought the unlikely collaboration about more than 10 months after the record’s release? When did Turkington decide change the song’s time signature from 3/4 to 4/4, creating an uncanny phasing effect between his instrumental and Panda Bear’s vocal line? Where did he get the repetitive, oddly dubby bass groove that sits in the center of the mix? Why did he decide to unravel the track halfway through, fragmenting it into several, nearly unlistenable pieces? And how, in the end, did the track come to be release through the band’s official channels?
These burning questions may never be answered. Neither Turkington nor AnCo have returned The FADER’s requests for comment, nor did they or release any type of explanatory statement in conjunction with the song. But its existence is a thing of beauty in and of itself. In accordance with On Cinema’s trademarked rating system, I’ll give “Car Keys” (Gregg Turkington Remix) all five potential bags of popcorn and throw in a commemorative key ring for good measure.
