Flies must have buzzed around the face and shoulders of Alan Lomax as he sat in distant, antiquated hollers with state of the art recording equipment capturing the musical lives of average folks. But if not for these situations, today field recordings would be drastically different in theme and application. The explorers of music during the 20^th century, Harry Smith and Moe Asch in addition to Lomax, didn't set out to define what music or art was indispensible, each just felt that it was necessary to preserve. Capturing or anthologizing a culture at the dawn of mass produced, in-home entertainment may have been perceived as bizarre, but even the most average person has a story to tell. And in the various recordings that these men got down on tape, American folk music was distilled and preserved for listeners in the future.

Making use of impromptu recording techniques, beyond the realm of collecting tunes for songbooks, re-entered the scope of creating music within the last forty years or so. During most of that time, groups making use of newly recorded noise or found sounds have been relegated to underground circles - a few Pink Floyd discs are the exception. But while this technique of utilizing non-musical elements in song stewed in cellars, basements and bedrooms, it seems as if the approach has been perfected with a few slight variations on the model of Lomax, Smith and Asch. Not the main proponent of this particular device, Animal Collective has nonetheless included a modicum of field recordings in its work even as the group now has moved away from the utilization of acoustic instrumentation and towards a more fully electronic form of conveying stories, ideas and music.