Good (Friday) Times with Panda Bear

Noah Lennox passed me on his way across the pelican crossing in Brixton. Hood up and inconspicuous simply blending with the comings and going of South London. In some ways Noah Lennox takes this on to the stage tonight. There is an effortless in his performance as he creates a psychedelic electronic storm through repetition, clipped beats and sonic dissonance.  There is no real interaction with the crowd until the end and little after the encore. Whilst in front of us and clearly central to all proceedings Panda Bear seems larger than his lone figure. The whole performance commanded from his workbench of electronic wizardry knits with the huge LED screens positioned either side and behind to present Panda Bear as something futuristic and otherworldly.

Today is Good Friday and Panda Bear is back in London to celebrate the release of Buoys at the Electric Ballroom in Brixton. After a thorough search on the door I make my way in to the venue – it’s dimly lit and blurred. It does not have the same vibrations as last year at the Village Underground in Shoreditch. The crowd slowly fills up for this early start – Panda Bear will start at 8.30. Early evening electronics for the soul served up for this diverse and disparate crowd who have found themselves in South London. There are Americans of all shapes and sizes, young emo kids, multicultural hipsters,  a couple from Scotland, a young guy who’d travelled from California and healthy LGBT+ mixing as one for the sounds of one man and one part Animal Collective.

Noah arrives without fanfare and checks his instruments before we check his track record. (Check the record – check the guy’s track record)  Plugging in headphones and turning things on there is a sudden burst of the opening of ‘My Girls’. He can’t possibly be teasing us?  It stops and that snatch is all we will hear. Yet in many ways Panda Bear’s brand of electronica is captured in that phrase. He deals in repetition and distortion, out of chaos and never ending reverb emerges beauty and fragility with supersonic bass shaking stomps to unite the floor as one nation under a (digital) groove.  Tonight we are mainly treated to the delights of Panda Bear’s last two wonderful records, the vinyl only release ‘A Day with the Homies’ and the new long player ‘Buoys’.  Through a harmony fuelled opening of simple keyboard drone emerges ‘Dolphin’ with its water drop beats and robotic vocal codas as Noah intones that he is ‘gonna switch of the screen – unblinded’ as the visuals power up behind and at his sides in what will be a profound light and video accompaniment throughout the show. Frazzled dancers, liquid drops and pulsating static merge with op art lines and symmetry and lysergic dreams and nightmarish grins as all that is solid melts into air (well light – but you knew where I was going?) throughout the whole set. They do not detract but add to the chemistry as we are exposed to the finer moments of his recent work, Dolphins becomes ‘Nod to the Folks’ and the set lists switches between the new album and its previous release.

Then within the inter song sound swathes comes the familiar strains of ‘Comfy in Nautica’. Where it started for me. Person Pitch was my first encounter with Panda Bear and I instantly fell for its Beach Boy wonk and skronk. As Noah urged us to ‘try to remember always, always to have a good time’ it struck me how wonderful a lyricist he is. Songs are constructed and delivered with words that hint at situations of danger, confront confusions and question it all. Panda bear is a wonderful singer his range and fearlessness in moving through scales and tones to create the most effective sonic delivery of any other singer currently on the scene surely deserves wider exposure. He’s a harmony group in one. A pocket sized Beach B Buoy. Words delivered in harmony with himself should be heard by more people and its evident that tonight isn’t quite the sell out I had expected. The top part of the venue is closed yet it doesn’t result in a lacklustre performance despite the early start.

Panda Bear continues to craft the tunes with a nod to his tussle with the Grim Reaper as he plays only one number from that album tonight in the form of ‘Crosswords’. The songs from ‘Buoys’ are greeted with cheers and yelps and even some air fist pumps (there was a guy from Chicago there – he dug it maaaan). ‘Token’ with its repetitive motif of guitar and soaring climax of longing as Noah repeats ‘ I want to tell you that I want you’ is astounding in it’s simplicity but delivered through a clear full on PA hits you hard and right in the gut. I was wondering how the sparseness of ‘Buoys’ wuld play out in a larger venue as I’d spent most of my time with this long player in isolation and headphones. The album has this return to  the ‘real’ but its cut up samples of guitars mixed with the open and honest recording of Noah up close felt incredible personal in its approach. It stills feels incredibly personal up close tonight even with jutaxposed visuals and full on volume. Buoys is a tough one. It can hold its own when turned up loud. 

Panda Bear is a tough buoy.

As the set builds to the final song we are treated to a new number as yet not released, ‘Playing the Long Game’. In its heavy bass and repetitive beats Panda Bear is forever reinventing and representing sound in his time away from Animal Collective. His work is truly original and uncluttered by the modern yet by its very existence repositions itself as the most modern and urgent music being made in the 21^st Century. As if Van Dyke Parks and AFX collaborated whilst Eno recorded the results.

Panda Bear thanks us for coming, thanks us for listening and thanks the support band and is gone. Lights power down. And we begin to clap and shout.

There is a fleeting return. 

Two songs. One from Tomboy, a sublime ‘Last Night of The Jetty’ with its beats turned to sledgehammer blows as Lennox asks ‘didn’t we have a good time?’  Followed by the bowel quaking ear wrecking sub bass bombing of ‘Sunset’. The crowd moves in unison, tripped and blissed out as sonics merge with soul and we all feel uplifted.  

Then Panda Bear is gone.

I don’t believe in God. I do believe in Panda Bear. It had been a Good Friday.





Panda Bear's site can be found here: https://pandabearofficial.com/

Here is Comfy from Nautica from the evening: courtesy of Lucas Moreira



Here is the video to 'Token' from 'Buoys' 

Pop Glam Folk Explosion: Lavinia BlackwALL and Stilton at The Social

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I headed over to London last night in anticipation of catching up with old acquaintances and intent on making new ones. I was going to see Lavinia Blackwall’s new musical venture since leaving the highly rated Trembling Bells in 2018. The gig was at The Social which has seen its fair share of upheaval recently and currently is still a venue for live sounds – a wonderfully cosy and tight space built for all sorts of hedonism to go off.

Tonight I was to be part of this hedonism with a side of gentle inflection and introspection. And for Monday in this part of town it was heartening to see that the show had sold out. The third to sell out on this short tour of cities and spaces up and down the country.  Now selling out a show is great for the band but as I travelled on a train into Charing Cross the news that I wasn’t going to get in had me pondering what my next move would be.

It’s here that Marco Rea came to my rescue. Marco is simply the best. A Superda extraordinaire and one part of Lavinia’s Stilton – her incredible band of musical brothers bringing light and shade to her lyrical journeys. Marco has been creating wonderful sounds from Scotland for sometime now, a man born full of melody and harmony that comes out in abundance tonight.  I first became enthralled to Marco’s musical world as he and Stuart Kidd sang together as The Wellgreen before a Euros Childs gig way back when.  Marco has remained pretty much constant in my musical life ever since.  And boy was I glad he was in it now – a quick message here and there and Marco had me in and I was very much relieved. 

First up were Solveig and Mike offering surreal folk trips and dreams in violin and acoustic guitar with harmonies cartwheeling and rolling around in lyrical play and smiles. I wasn’t sure what I was going to think – I don’t have the folk antennae – I can’t always here the connections or the drift from the norm. Yet I felt I was being challenged by them – in a good way. It made me curious to check them out further. They also recounted stories of falling in ditches which tickled me, sang tales of sandwiches, misheard a request for a song with Kite in the title and brought to life the cinema of the sea.  Not many groups can do this in one set. Technically they are wonderful and Mike’s acoustic guitar ticklings and jangles are complimented by the supberb violin of Solveig creating a rising folk psychedelia for the growing crowd.   Although I hope Mike doesn’t have to play in such tight spaces for the rest of the tour as his accident prone frame nearly caused the violin to be absent for the rest of the set (possibly tour)  after he knocked it in a moment of punching the air.  A great opening set and they would later return to help out Lavinia and her ever expanding band.

John Martin played next  - a person’s name but a band – do you get me? He’s John but there were other people there on the stage. There were flashes of beatific chord sequences and witticisms in jangles and tremolo. Reminded me of The Divine Comedy.

Then came the psychedelic beast of Green Seagull bedecked in the ramalamma of late sixties freakbeat fashions. They had this

incessant chug which was good. Reminded me a great deal of The Zombies meets early Pink Floyd uptown in a battle of harmonics and minor keys. They are supporting The Seeds in mid April at the Beat Bespoke – it will be night of getting down and shaking your fringe if you’re into that sort of thang. And I am. The keyboardist parents were there too. They should be proud of their daughter as her groove holds the whole thing together whilst guitars riff out and the bass provides staccato throbs to their psychedelic garage chug a lug.I reckon with a little more space they’d be ones to wig out.

So after three quality sets the main act arrived and there was a good crowd and a good feeling about it all.  Now at this point I am yet to be able to name all the songs and like a fool I forgot to swipe a set list to help me piece this all together. So it’s going to get rambling.  Lavania arrives backed by the kaftan bedecked Stilton a sort of pop folk glam group of wayward souls who know how to party and dance the night away.  The set showcases the range of Lavania’s vocal sorcery moving through the scales and tones with ease. It really is quite mesmerizing and in Zepplin’s words, ‘tight but loose’ adding rich textures to the groove and goo of Stilton. Marco has written a few songs with Lavania and all have this richness to them as they start one place and then by way of George Harrison, Neil Young, Arthur Lee and some part of Wings end somewhere else in a perfect blend of chime and harmony. Pop punch in folk structures. It works and the crowd knows it too. Whilst all of this might be new to us and even to Lavinia (after all these are new songs only just getting aired and may not yet be finished) there’s an understanding that they will become classics and we are witnessing the start of a different chapter in Lavinia’s choral quest for something after the bells have stopped.

The night has a fun feel to it. It’s not earnest  - nor serious – but it is honest. There’s in song chatter and discussion including some recollections about lost phones in ditches (the theme of the tour) and projectile vomiting in Oxford Circus. We also get to hear the tales of the tunes  - one song ‘Watson’ is apparently about a werewolf who is committing murders and the detective investigating is actually the suspect. To be fair it works better in melody and performance than me trying to explain it here.  Another was called ‘Keep Warm’ – you can probably work that one out yourself.. It isn’t all one tempo of souped up folk glam rock shenanigans some songs aired tonight have a creeping melancholic undertow to remind us that sometimes things can be lost and not clear in this day and age. There are waltzes and ballads mixed within the up-tempo adding to the dynamics and all round brilliance of what will surely be a storming debut album which we’ll hopefully get to hear this year.

For the final numbers – there could have been three or possibly two – Lavinia and Stilton are joined by Solveig and Mike. It’s getting rather cramped up there and I’m not sure The Social can contend with that many musicians on ‘stage’ at any one time. To be fair you can’t really say Seb was on stage – he’s pushed up in the passage to the toilet – but he still played like a trooper adding flourish and power throughout the evening to Lavania’s delicate sounds.  However Solveig and Mike are a good addition further complimenting the charm of it all. As violin merges with acoustic guitars, melody filled guitar licks and shapes, pianos , expert bass, tight rhythms and soaring vocals it only adds a further magical quality to it all.  Finishing with an incredible version of current single “Waiting for Tomorrow ’ the night is over. There are shouts of ‘play it again’ and ‘more’ but it’s not to be – it’s 11 o’clock on a Monday and time to get home and rest for the day ahead.  

I told Lavinia and Marco that I was going to pursue a Kate Bush fronting The Lost White Album take to it all – but the more I return to the evening and listen closer to the sounds on the single – I’m hearing Joni Mitchell – this is Joni’s ‘Esher’ sessions  - a White Album conceived through another dimension of feeling. Live there’s a Beatles sense of playfulness throughout whilst the vocals send you somewhere else. There’s a nod to the past and a rush to the future with this folk rock feeling. This band and their music comforts in its reminder of previous times yet feels modern and alive as it delivers smile after smile in abundance.  

I’m glad I know Marco because it led me to this. 

Lavinia BlackALL and Stilton have already sold out three dates this tour. They will go on to sell out even more. 

I had a wonderful time and you will too  - go and see them  - they are still out on the road this week.

You can find music by them here: https://laviniablackwall.bandcamp.com/releases 

Here’s the video for “Waiting for Tomorrow’

A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Band That Rules From the Centre of the Ultraworld: The Orb at the Queen Elizabeth Hall

It wasn’t planned.  It came to me as I waited. I could kill off ambient house music. In some sort of sound terrorist intervention smash up the stage and call the whole thing off. I hadn’t planned any of it but reading Bill Drummond lately has made me question why I should be here in the first place. I mean doesn’t Ambient House really belong back in the late eighties/ early nineties? I’m sick of this ambient house with its nods and appropriation of ‘world music’ and its offers of meditation and enlightenment. I’m sick of its dreamy dirge like nothingness that just drifts through me and over me without demanding that I listen. I’m sick of Eno and his crew lauding it over us all with his nods to minimal space and open thinking and no drums. I’m sick of all the colours and symbolism associated with a genre that has risen up out of experimental music and become a byword for really being the sounds in-between things.

I want ambient house to die.

I had travelled down by train early to get to the Southbank – no real reason to leave earlier than usual. I hadn't anyone to meet. Concerts are normally solidarity affairs for me. Even though I’m bursting with trivia and facts and want to discuss possible setlists and always hope to meet the artist in some sort of acknowledgement that I care and they care too.

I used to do this when I wrote a fanzine – made the untouchable possible and talked to people. Now crippled by age and a lack of energy I simply imagine all the things that could happen.

And it happened at The Orb tonight at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Not interviews with artists nor hook ups just the simplicity of crowds letting go and finally feeling alive. It was clear that we weren’t out of it and certainly weren’t discussing what we were on. But there was a sense of abandon – well in the space between Row A and the stage. It all went off there.

But back to killing off ambient house – ambient music altogether. The KLF (that’s Bill Drummond and Jim Cauty) deleted their back catalogue at the end of their period of fame. They stopped. Literally pulled the plug and refused to make their sounds available. In essence they died. (Which is ironic considering they came back after 23 years as an undertakers) 

The Orb haven’t done this.

They have continued to evolve in modern times.

Releasing long player after long player. Which means they are creating something beyond the tags, the genre, the label they are often given.  They are creating sounds beyond the (little fluffy) clouds and at the edge of space. 

I will not call them an ambient house group.

A long time ago Jim Cauty was part of The Orb. In fact I watched Alex and Jim trying to create sounds with a DAT and decks in a corridor whilst Primal Scream played. Ketamine had zoned the whole place – no one could move  - there are flashes of them sat under a table and in all honesty at that point we could have called the whole thing off. There’s only so much extended reverb we can take – especially in that state. Ambience was a state of mind – not a soundtrack

But Alex carried on regardless. 

And I am glad that he has.

There’s a lot of Punk Rock in the good Doctor – in The Orb. I think they mean it maaaaan.

So my fantasies about killing ‘ambient house’ subsided over the course of the evening.  I entered the brutalist modernism of the Queen Elizabeth Hall (the building that boat tours on the Thames call a ‘carbuncle’ alongside the Royal Festival Hall and the National Theatre – mainly because they paraphrase would be King Charley – but also because they have no soul and don’t live in London) I was early and there was a fella done up in a ‘universe and planets print suit’ – I never spoke to him. But he was the real deal. He was Ambient in textiles.

And then The Orb tonight were a revelation.

Thomas Felhman wasn’t there as far as I could make out. This was just Dr LX and a young fella and a bassist. But that was actually enough. I’ve seen The Orb countless times and like The Rolling Stones (so I’m led to believe) they can be a hit or a miss – even with a ‘burger’ or two.  Which makes them unpredictable. Which is how it should be really – otherwise they might as well be a covers band. Which is odd because as I made my way home and ventured across the road in Blackheath there was a band playing in the Railway Tavern – they were playing Blur’s Song 2 – the singer was enunciating the Whoo Hoo – but as Whoo Yeah – it was flat as fuck. Perhaps I should turn my energy to killing that off? 

But I was happy though because what happened tonight was The Orb simply nailed it.

They made sounds that pulled at every element of being. Alex is simply the master of ceremonies. Curating (yes I said it) and dropping samples that lift people and places to higher states. Alex is able to conjure up an atmosphere with his wizardry at the decks – because that’s what it is. He plays samples – manipulates them and takes the crowd with him. He makes us follow in his dubbed out glory and uses machines to layer bliss amongst us all. And the audience weren’t tired all ravers who would be better off sitting down than moving a few limbs – the QEH crowd were a mixture of old and new – not so loved up as before but ready and willing to get on the orb bus that would carry them to orblivion. Obviously, I was part of the older set and as ‘Perpetual Dawn’ kicked in and we all gave way to getting down with it – it was heartening to see some people staying put – dodgy hips I presume. But they were smiling.

The Orb arrived with no fanfare. Following a spaced out, dubbed out and clubbed out set from who knows – it wasn’t clear – but it was enjoyable – The Orb arrived.  Suddenly they were on and making sounds and ‘No Sounds Were Out of Bounds’ this evening – yet vocals were. No guests  - no additions. Just Alex and that fella and a bassist when required (if that fella is Felhmann then he is the new Dorian Gray) The audience were sat – respectful and appreciative. To be fair I wasn’t out of my seat from the beginning. But LX was casting his magick he was casting a spell in reverb and dub that we could not resist. There were snatches of this and that. Early sounds mixed with the new. And then out of the ambience came Towers of Dub – this incredible powerful repetitive calling. Heavy bass and dogs barking – the ultimate in dance friendly sounds. Yet we stayed put – to be fair I had lost it at that moment – I may have even closed my eyes in the sway (hey hey hey) I hadn’t heard 'Towers of Dub' that powerful in years. It was incredible and you could feel the will of the audience. Waiting for the right time to get up and get down with it. 

The Orb journeyed further following 'Towers' with  'Star 6,7,8 and 9' I was well and truly enthralled. I had decided that killing ambient house would not be possible this evening. There was clearly a place for it – well a place for this – as I said I think The Orb are creating something fresh and different and I didn’t want to ruin the evening for everybody else. Besides the magick had worked – I was swaying – putting my arms in the air and generally getting wide-eyed loon like. It was a mild mannered rave up for the middle class masses all washed and suitably booted and home by half ten but within those hours we were enthralled by The Orb soundsystem. Tune after tune declared their sonic prominence at the top of the pile – crafting huge pulsating monsters from decks and FX. And the crowd got more heady and decided that dancing the evening away was required. From the 'Back Side of the Moon' Alex and Co. created a sonic mix of bleeps and yelps and dubbed out dissonance to rock the masses, with new new grooves from the latest long player mixed in with the perennial crowd pleasers. I thought it was going to go off when that Millie Ripperton refrain drifted from the speakers as Alex mixed and chopped 'A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From the Centre of the Ultraworld' to wild abandon. And then finally as the curfew reigned in and with twenty minutes before ‘game over’ Joni was asked what were the skies like when she was young.

And she told us.

The skies had little fluffy clouds in them and ran on forever.

You knew it was coming but a song that is over 30 years old was still presented in a new form. It still had an impact. The Orb had won. The Queen Elizabeth Hall was awash with grins and arms aloft – ok so we were older and weren’t going to last much longer than 10pm but it was joyous and fun. Fifteen minutes of fluffiness.  The Orb are an electronic group who offer up a sound that is both comforting and challenging. A sound that is relevant and nostalgic. It’s a sound that is thirty years in the making – The Orb make sounds were no sounds are out of bounds – they do not make ambient house.

They are music makers of the finest quality. Just don’t call it Ambient House.

 
The Orb Sounds can be found here:  https://www.theorb.com/

Here's the full rendition of Little Fluffy Clouds from QEH 30th March, 2019 - thanks to Willy Billiams for filming it.