2 Different Melodies Creating a Third

I thought this would be a good opportunity to discuss, in brief, some of the sonic experimentation of one of my favorite bands, The Animal Collective. On record, the band makes use of many ideas involving sound manipulation and abstract ways of creating melody, but what I want to talk about here is something they do in the live setting. The way the band performs live changes from tour to tour and currently it is just three guys with one of them working with samplers and effects, and the other two singing and using effects. With no use of actual guitar or drum it's hard to convey to someone who hasn't seen them that they still very much so have a live band dynamic, and for the most part this comes through the use of vocals. The key idea behind the new songs they are playing is the idea that during many moments one singer will be singing a completely different melody from the other, and while this at some points seems like it's about to clash and become incomprehensible to the human ear and mind, more often than not the two differing melodies mesh together in and out of creating a very definite third melody. This also ties into some of the transitions between the songs where, seamlessly, one song goes into the other so gradually there really doesn't feel like one ends or the other begins, and the time in between some lingering sound of the ending song melds with a beginning sound of the next song. It is tricks like these that really make for an interesting and mind-blowing music experience. One thing I also found funny was that the band was on Conan O'Brien recently and if you had the subtitles on the description of the two singers was quite amusing. Not sure who was in charge of typing that up! haha!