Tangerine Reef is the product of longtime collaborations between Animal Collective and Coral Morphologic, an art-science duo consisting of marine biologist Colin Foord and musician J.D. McKay. The two groups first met in 2010 at a screening of Animal Collective's ODDSAC, when Coral Morphologic gave Deakin a DVD consisting of their work. The members of Animal Collective were impressed by the footage and reached out, leading to several collaborations, such as Geologist soundtracking Coral Morphologic's 2011 short film Man o War, and Foord providing spoken word on Avey Tare's solo album Eucalyptus. The two groups have also gone scuba diving together. The genesis of Tangerine Reef came in February 2017 at an art exhibition called "Coral Orgy", hosted at New World Center in Miami, where Animal Collective performed over video projections made by Coral Morphologic. Material from Tangerine Reef was also played live in May 2018 during a performance at David Lynch's Festival of Disruption in Brooklyn. The band recorded the initial performance with the intent of releasing it as a live album, but found the recording "unusable" due to crowd noise. Rather than abandon the project, the band got together at a Baltimore studio run in part by Deakin and "took a few days and did four or five run-throughs of the Miami set." To recapture the feel of the original performance, the album was recorded live and with no overdubs. The recording was then sent to Coral Morphologic to provide the video component. Animal Collective thought it could simply be paired with the video they originally performed to, but Coral Morphologic felt they needed to re-shoot parts of it. The album features the standard lineup of the band with the exception of Panda Bear, the band's first full-length release to do so. Panda Bear also did not feature in the live performances of the music. His absence is due to distance, as he lives in Portugal. The project commemorates the 2018 International Year of the Reef, and is intended to draw public attention to the issue of coral reef conservation. According to Geologist, the band hopes that "Animal Collective fans and beyond will see this footage and be inspired to care about the ocean and care about coral reefs and do what they can." For Foord, "the point is to introduce corals into pop culture", with the aim of speaking to people who would otherwise not have interest in corals. The band cited the experimental film Koyaanisqatsi as an influence on the album. The work of filmmaker Jean Painlevé, and the documentary film Powers of Ten, were named by Foord as inspirations for the filmmakers.