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' 

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. 

Panda Bear is listened to in this house

I find myself returning to the ‘new’ Panda Bear album again and again – it’s kind of rolled around my soul for the last month or two or three. There’s something euphoric and utterly bleak about it at the same time. It’s all that cracked beauty that’s getting me – you getting me? I’m not sure how I arrived at Panda Bear – it was through a chance encounter with Animal Collective possibly or a mention in Mojo (oh no) about Person Pitch that probably got me started.

It was either Bros or Comfy in Nautica that did it.

I love that cacophonous sound of digital and analogue breaking down and spinning round and round with reverb drenched falsetto like a future Wilson brother hooked up to Detroit and trance. I still have a whole heap of equipment lodged around the house and in various buildings – old synths, drum machines, 8 track recorders, echo units, drum machines, sequencers and laptops with part finished songs and unfinished beats. I sometimes think I might set it all up and record an opus – you know Wilson meets Detroit.

But Panda Bear got there first. Oh he was way out in front.

I don’t listen to as much electronica as I used to. There’s not much room in the day for beats and bleeps when you’ve the madness of young minds running rings round mine. As I said most of the time electronica is confined to solo car journeys – but I can sneak Panda Bear in on the pretext that the kids love The Beach Boys.

So what to say of Panda Bear meets the Grim Reaper – a title already intriguing –like a hallucinatory dub album with dark over(under) tones. Now hear this! Noah Lennox, a.k.a. Panda Bear, a.k.a. one-fourth of the founding members of Animal Collective, sees it like this,  ‘[as] more comic-booky, a little more lighthearted,” he says. “Like Alien Vs. Predator.”

It has that sci-fi/ lo-fi  - oh why appeal. Within the ‘soup’ there are ever morphing sounds and feels – cycles and loops – textures and tones coursing throughout the whole thing. It was made with the collaborative soul of aka Pete Kember (everyone’s got an aka these days) Sonic Boom. A sonic alchemist from way back when who blended psychotropic drugs with paeans to the almighty channelled through electrical velocity, hum and drone.

What’s strange is that this wholly unique and striking long player is ripped from the heart of those sample packs available for all to use. But it takes a sense of the unknown to transform them beyond the usual and make it unusual, “I got into the idea of taking something that felt kind of common — the opposite of unique — and trying to translate that into something that felt impossible,” he says. The textures for the album came together everywhere from El Paso, Texas, to a garage by the beach near his home in Lisbon, Portugal, where he has lived with his family since 2004. I‘ve put a couple of these stretched out electronic psyche numbers on a compilation for the kids (my kids – that’s who I’m doing it for) and it’s clearly Mr Noah that gets us all going – all nonsense shout outs and something like a ‘big chip on her leg’ – well that’s what we sing.

 It’s electronica sending out viruses to infect the brain.

(won – won – won) Wonderful.

I’m not in the mood for a full review – I just need to get back to writing somehow – somewhere – but I want to put down a few thoughts about ‘Tropic of Cancer’.

 “Some of the songs address a big change, or a big transformation,” And here is the central song about death. That’s the one I keep returning to (it’s on the kids compilation – we sing it together – maaaaaan.)  It’s truly heart breaking – truly heart breaking – with its repetitive sample of harp from The Nutcracker Suite and utter openness about the devastation of losing someone ( you won’t come back – you can’t come back – you won’t come back to it) “It’s sort of marking change — not necessarily an absolute death, but the ending of something, and hopefully the beginning of something else.” All somewhere over the rainbow - but it's a place you don't want to go. Saying that I always felt that song had a sinister edge. A little too much 'survivor soul' in it.

I know Noah keeps on getting compared to Brian Wilson – but you can trace it right back through his Panda Bear work – introspective – open – real. Tropic of Cancer is ‘In my Room’ – an honesty so much missed in this calculating unforgiving modern austere times (perhaps I wasn’t made for these times and nor was Noah) There’s fragility in his words and harmonies that sink into the psyche – it gnaws away at you – like his subject matter.  And he couples this with genuine psychedelia – colouring sound and song in modern ‘far out’ ways.

Panda Bear meets The Grim Reaper and comes out on top. It’s a wonderful long player from a wonderful talent.

You know Wilson’s getting on – Noah’s still young. Let’s book some time for him at Ocean Way Recording, Hollywood.