In an interview with Pedestrian.tv [via Pitchfork], Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox spills the beans – well, a couple of beans – on his new Panda Bear solo album, the follow-up to 2007’s mighty Person Pitch.

“[…] It’s going pretty good. It’s been a long process. I’ve thought about it for a long time while we were doing the Merriweather stuff, so I had a long gestation process in my mind but only really started cracking on it in September. It’s kind of scary doing something totally different, like I’ve been working in a sampler zone for five or six years now. It definitely feels like a new zone, its scary but also exciting as well.

“The tone is a lot darker and it sounds sort of dramatic or romantic to me. But I’m in still in the thick of the thing so it’s really tough to be objective at this point.”

Lennox is less easily drawn on the subject of a new Animal Collective album, and makes it clear that a rest period is the band’s priority right now.

“There hasn’t been any talk about the next one, we’re thinking maybe when we’re in Australia we’ll start to talk about it. But it’s going to a little while before we really start getting working on that because I want to focus on this solo thing for a bit. And after five or so years or how ever long it’s been, of constant solid touring we all need to tone it down a bit. It’ll be a little bit before we get fully charged again.”

And what about the Animal Collective film (a collaboration with director Danny Perez) that’s expected to surface in early 2010?

“It’s really intense – it’s dark. To me it’s super dark. It’s definitely a vibe that I feel like I’m not so close to, it’s more of the other guys who are the horror movie guys.”

Cheers Panda. As you were.