Take Away Shows is a feature on the French music blog La Blogotheque that puts current artists into the streets of France to perform their songs mic'd only by the camera recording them. This puts the artists in a unique environment to perform their songs -- without individually mic'ing each instrument the artists have to compensate by arranging themselves in such a manner as to prevent one instrument from drowning another out. Similar to poetry, where words are usually constrained by meter and verse, when music is put under this kind of 'strain', the results can be pretty fantastic.
Previously on TAS's I saw a pretty cool performance of Lykke Li's "Little Bit" which featured muted percussion as well as a man screaming at the band from an overhead window. There was also a performance by Vampire Weekend performing tracks from their new album while driving in a van. Both of those performances, however, were by bands that use pretty pedestrian instruments to convey their sound. When you're running the standard drums, guitars, bass, and piano set-up its not really that big of a stretch to perform under these restrictions.
So that's what makes Animals Collective's performance of their song "Taste" so special. By utilizing all kinds of 'found' items Animal Collective creates a sound through the limited range of the provided video mic that could be worthy of a 'head-phones' listen. I love how the band mics the squeaky wheels of a shopping cart up front while also using paper cups to compress the amplitude of the vocals so as to not drown out the rest of the elements of the song -- with the added effect of creating distortion on the harmonics of their respective voices.
