Gold Panda
Jamie Fraser takes a look at the musician who blends sampler-triggered melodies with more club-ready beats
Gold Panda is a 30-year-old from Essex who produces highly melodic downtempo electronica. He studied at the School Of Oriental and African Studies and also spent several years living in Japan, an experience which heavily influenced his sound. He first gained acclaim in 2009 with his release ‘Quitter’s Raga’, which generated a large amount of hype amongst music websites, and was named the 72nd best song of 2009 by Pitchfork Media. Just two minutes long, the song flutters by on a wave of mangled vocals and samples of Indian instrumentation that change and evolve as the song progresses, and it ends in almost a completely different place to where it started. While in other producers’ hands the abundance of ideas would result in a total mess of a song, Gold Panda’s immaculate arranging of the tune’s individual components mean that it is instead transformed into an endlessly replayable slice of Four Tet-esque electronica.
Gold Panda started his career by doing remixes for various bands such as Simian Mobile Disco and Bloc Party. Although none of his remixes are truly stunning – as he has said, “most of the remixes I do, I hate” – his subtle techno-indebted remix of HEATLH’s ‘Before Tigers’ is a great slow-burning track ideal for the comedown at the end of a long night. He soon moved on to releasing his own productions, and his ‘Miyamae EP’, released a few months before ‘Quitter’s Raga’, already showed the hallmarks of his sound – most notably on ‘Back Home’, where a jittering cut-up sample serves as the lead melody while the track rises and recedes around it. After the release of ‘Quitter’s Raga’, he saw off a highly productive year with the mellow ‘Before’ EP, which was initially available only in Japan before it was given a limited release on Gold Panda’s own label Notown Records.
He kicked off 2010 with the release of his single ‘You’, an uplifting tune guided by an infectious vocal melody, and followed it soon after with his debut album Lucky Shiner [Spotify]. Named after his grandma, the album fulfils the promise of his earlier releases and contains a diverse set of sounds and textures, with a variety of interesting samples seemingly sourced from as many places as possible. From the muted UK Funky of ‘Snow & Taxis’ to the drum workout of ‘India Lately’, the album shifts between styles but never loses its focus. Highlight of the set is ‘Marriage’, a beautiful track that glides along on a short melodic line as samples of various instruments drift in and out of the mix. Recent tours have shown that his live shows blend his sampler-triggered melodies with more club-ready beats, and aren’t to be missed. Catch him at XOYO tonight.
