Panda Bear was loose in London

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I have enjoyed the thrills of live sounds for years and years. There’s something magical about the experience of seeing something you committed to your memory through repeated revolutions on record players suddenly becoming real for your ears in a building with the minds that made it there in front of you.

I can remember most of the gigs, shows, sets, concerts – what ever you wish to call them – that I have attended - not the literal evening but sensations, snippets, sounds and smells that conjure up a moment or an emotion that was lodged way in my brain. Fleeting images of my heroes played out in mind films on the surface of my eyes.

Panda Bear at the Village Underground on Tuesday is now firmly lodged in the cerebral mass of synapses and connections. I am a fan of Panda Bear – you all should be a fan of Panda Bear – because there’s a beauty within those electronic collages that soothes the soul.

For those unaccustomed to Panda Bear – he is actually Noah Lennox – and one part Animal Collective. I came to Animal Collective after listening to Panda Bear – not the other way round.  I like Animal Collective but I like Panda Bear more. Each tune he has released has wrapped itself around my heart and made me smile that little longer – not that they are all happy tunes mind.

I arrive at the Village Underground a little early. So I head off for a drink in graffiti covered buildings and hip surroundings.  I buy a drink. It costs £5.80.  Ridiculous really.  I think The Smiths t-shirt I bought at one of my first concerts cost £5.

Some time the city is out to rip you off.

Panda Bear is playing in East London tonight – but this is no rip off – this is not a rock n roll swindle.  And this is his one date in the city as he waltzes through Europe and beyond. There is only one day to spend with this homie. Not even a day – it’s only a night.

But I’m glad I spent it with you.

Proceedings begin with Maria Reis who produces sounds that are both haunting and jaunty – there’s a popness to her MBV meets Eno tunes.  The crowd are warm in their appreciation and the cavernous building  - with it’s bar on the side making it difficult to see the stage  - feels intimate as she plays to the swelling numbers.

And then we wait for PB.  I have managed to find a spot way down the front about two bodies back and to the right of the stage. The crowd is hip and youthful – but I don’t care - I am an old man taking space from the youth. I dig this too. 

I wait for the arrival of Noah.  At 9.30 the lights dim and Panda Bear enters the room – he takes off his coat- keeps on his hoodie - picks up the microphone and begins to create sonic alchemy. Tonight’s ‘show’ and to be fair it is a ‘show’ is full of repetitive visuals and strobed lights and screens there to add and support the wonderful sounds of the Bear’s workbench.  I’m intrigued by the workbench – it looks cobbled together with MDF to hold instruments that shake the very soul.  Noah works this table of instruments(?) throughout the set – sounds blending and growing from his array of special units and keys – drones become fragments of songs and layers of sound build upon each other into this beautiful digital cacophony offset with sweet harmonies and honest feelings.

To be honest it’s hard making out what I’m listening to – I never got hold of the last vinyl only ‘A Day with the Homies’ but I guess this is what I’m listening to interspersed with songs from when he took on the Grim Reaper and won. There’s a few older ones too all presented with a backdrop of a pulsating dancing woman in garish make up and flowing dresses. It’s a trip maaaaaaan. A real mind bending trip. But the audience are here for the ride – there’s a group behind me bellowing the words and dancing with wild abandon – we are here to worship at Lennox’s sonic altar – we are his disciples – which is apt because it’s just after Easter that he walks amongst us.

The night develops through each sample and repetitive drone with the Panda adding vocals as loops become recognizable tunes  - it’s hard to know where to clap – so I just grin throughout. The new tunes are harder in terms of beats – there’s elements of hip hop, drum and bass and the inevitable dubstep – but it doesn’t feel bandwagon jumping more an evolving landscape of sound that Panda Bear inhabits. The set consisted of this according to setlist.com

Dolphin (New Song)

Flight

Boys Latin

I Know I Don't (New Song)

Part of the Math

Cosplay (No Outro)

Cranked (New Song)

Shepard Tone

Crosswords

Home Free (New Song)

Selfish Gene

Cosplay Demo (Outro)

The end of the set before the encore slowly built into a huge pulsating bass drone with vomiting visuals and strobes. It was heavy work. But there’s absolute heavy soul in his squelching electronic psychedelia.

Lennox is not a dance musician  - but we sway in unison at times to his kinetic rhythms and futuroid B(each) Boy singing – because after all  his voice remains his secret weapon. It’s what everything hangs on –and follows this incredible set with an encore of three incredible works  - Sabbath (New Song), Crescendo (New Song) and finally Sunset with each one getting better than the last.  We are uplifted and dancing – and then he is gone.

Coat on and out the building – well probably not - but I want to afford him some rock star status – not that he is that at all but he deserves to held up a little higher than he is. It’s hard to find music that resonates and connects in this digital forever streaming age and Panda Bear is making incredible tunes that will stand up and be re -evaluated in future years.

I’m glad Panda Bear played at the Village Underground and you will be glad next time he plays – because you’ll be there too.

Here's a Part of the Math from France - I can't find any videos from London - but you get the idea. 

Sounds from the overground - solitary rants from the listening man No.4

I have finished 'Don't Rhyme for the sake of Riddlin'. It was about Public Enemy. It could have been better - but it got me listening to Chuck and Flav again.

I made four compilation CDs for a drive up North.

I read a review of Camp Bestival and how the Happy Mondays were a triumph.

I was offered the chance of a ticket to the closing ceremony Hyde park concert with New Order, The Specials and Blur. I turned it down.

I played Show Biz Kids by Steely Dan to my brother.

I looked through a whole heap of old concert photographs including Primal Scream, The Cure, The Groove Farm, The Pastels and My Bloody Valentine.

I heard Adam Ant in the distance.

I continued to to create more lies about George Harrison.

I further lost touch with modern pop music.

I looked up where the HMV Forum was in preparation for going to see P.I.L. I also read the Mojo article with Lydon and his band and kind of got excited.

I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated that an article in Mojo had included No UFO's over Strings of Life as the most  seminal and important 'electronic' records from Detroit and don't get me started about the inclusion of Selected Ambient Works II and no sign of The Orb'd first long player in it's Top 50 records. Easy journalism on the rise again.

I wondered,with Emma, why the Stone Roses didn't feature in Danny Boyle's opening ceremony musical interlude. Clearly a Blur fan.

I noted that the ongoing transformation of Alex Turner into Bono continues at a pace.

I got my brother to copy a load of music for me - which he had already done but I had lost the discs. It happens on a frequent basis.

I recorded the first two Sha La La flexi discs to computer and an single from a Manchester band called The Weeds.

I started several posts for this blog. I have yet to finish them.

I did watch this again though. Public Enemy rockin' the spot at the London DMC awards 1989 - the video says 88. But don't believe the hype. What makes this is the way that Flav makes this happen - the record will get played and the audience will get entertained. Hip Hop as rock n roll. 

I should paint the [blue] room

There was a time when I immersed myself in electronic sounds. Those synthetic beats and the squelch of the 303. Around then – back in the early nineties - the band I was in [which was mostly in my head] had mutated to a three piece – drum machines, analogue synths, sequencers, tape decks, guitars and dub bass. I would set up elaborate recording sessions – those bedroom beats – emanating from the record deck or sequenced on the Korg – with the Roland Juno 6 providing the arpeggiated pulse of the post summer of love.

I was no Aphex Twin.

But those moments exist – locked down on C60s and C90s – waiting to explode again when I eventually buy the Amstrad Studio 100 from ebay – to reanimate them and revel in more nostalgia. [but i said no more nostalgia rides]

These [acidic] experiments were fuelled by the electronica that was slowly filling my waking and walking hours and drifting ever more into my dreams. I was a postman at this point, in communications you see – after all that degree had to count for something. Being a postman had its pluses – its positives – you get to the sorting office – you sort your letters – pop them in the frame – bag up [I am carry bag man] and get out – the time is then yours – through those concrete streets, that when you wondered stopped you going under.

And at weekends I would fill my head with electronic sounds. In the clubs at volume – through purchases across northern record stores and Nick, Danny, Darryl or Chris’s recommendations

And over the last week I have attempted to listen to The Orb.

It had been a week of oddness, of vagueness and cravings and hallucinations as infections rolled around my face and seeped into my teeth. I’ve felt like this many times – all full of something and reeling. And wanting to paint the house - but not moving a muscle - feeling that draining feeling and not sleeping. 

And I always return to the ambient ways of the techno pioneers. Lying upstairs as Smokebelch slowly beats its 13 minutes into my skull and soothes the gums that swell and provide far too much heat in my face. And then mustering the energy to get down stairs and selecting The Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume Two – whilst putting on Football Focus as Papa Doc Crookes and Robbie Savage banter over Swindon’s form or whether Blackburn deserve it this season.

I think I first heard Aphex Twin on John Peel – Analogue Bubblebath or possibly Didgeridoo - all analogue production and rolling acid lines. That DIY approach – recorded on cassettes and cheap four tracks. I remember getting our first computer – a Spectrum 128+ - Daley Thompson loaded in bleeps and whirrs – and simple programming to make it hold a note. You could get a Cheetah keyboard to link up with it – I coveted that keyboard. Never bought it or received it – but imagined the possibilities of machines making music. Richard D James made the sounds in all our analogue heads – those echoes and arpeggios that soothed the soul and chimed with the industrial backgrounds of steel towns.

Washed out and slow – rhythmic but not precise.  Pure ambient work[s] for the sleepless youth.

But I was talking of The Orb and their ambient riffing. I have been trying to listen to them. Not lots of Orb songs – just Blue Room. The epic prog –ambient tune that made it on to TOTP. It’s 47 minutes long. Taking me back to those days and nights when sleep was not required.

It was the day of my twenty first birthday when Alex and Thrash played chess on Top of the Pops – this odd appearance on a pop show for the teens all awash with dub bass and swirls and squelches. I watched it with Paul and then ventured to The Beefeater on a roundabout on the way into town to buy my own and others drinks as I came of age. Listening to The Orb live was a wonder – a vibrant dubbed up sonic experience for the new age. I remember Kilburn Ballroom – bedecked in laser light and smoke – all dark corners and exchanges as their dub merriment carried us upwards and onwards. Music was opening up back then. We were listening to all sorts – everything and anything went.

Thrown in the mix by the good doctor.

And I guess that’s the same for all the young ones today – as they raid the vaults and collide the sounds into new spaces and experiences for their own long nights and emerging dawns. But these electronic sounds are just as important as Heatbreak Hotel – this chain reaction from machines to man through minds and switches and chains and patches – as musique concrete gave way to loops and moogs and the radiophonic workshop switched us on to the low LFO [the work of the good doctor again – except this was a different one – Alex has yet regenerate]

Thrown out at two o’clock onto Kilburn High Street all disorientated as lamp light beams stretched and radiated glows signalling the way home. We decided not to get the night bus – navigate our way through streets and across roads – back street suburbs and mansions as eyes widened to the dark and laughs and nonsense came readily from our mouths.

The Orb could have that effect – all soothing and safe in their ambient arms. And on this magical mystery tour of North London past Abbey Road and houses with one light on – I glanced a bin bag – a simple black bin liner. No reason to get it in my sights – but I fixed on it nonetheless – as we made our way to Trafalgar Square – when buses could drive all the way around it – and between us we opened this bin bag up – a random sack on the roadside and out tumbled ‘Turtle Crazy’ by The Toy Dolls – all glaring cover in a two colour print.

It was a sack full of them – unplayed and unplayable I suppose – but a sack full nonetheless - I would say it was a unique moment – but things like that happen when you’re young and fancy free. But finding them in that sack somehow chimes with the Orb’s sense of fun – that playfulness that keeps your feet dancing and your head expanding.

It was good to listen to The Orb – it was good to get back to my electronic roots – and in the midst of revisiting that room in my room – I stumbled on this – what The Orb do best.