Gold Panda conjures danceable soundscapes with ‘The Work’
While staying in Japan – a second home for the Essex-based producer – Gold Panda (aka Derwin Dicker) found himself in a grim hotel room with just one window. “I was basically in a massive tower block 24 floors up,” he explains in a press statement. “And there’s all this mesh netting, so people don’t jump off. It was so depressing, and I thought, ‘fuck it, I could still jump.'” But he didn’t jump. “I was really hungover”, he discloses. “And that was the last time I was drunk. I love the drinking; I can’t deal with the hangovers, the regret, the anxiety of depression. And I feel so much better.”
Panda’s latest album, The Work, follows a period of personal reckoning. From its very first moments, the LP conjures up a half-real space. We are ushered in by ‘The Swimmer’, a slice of powder-blue electronica responsible for introducing us to the sonic elements Panda will utilise throughout: warm, glitched-out acoustic piano, plucked koto strings, fizzing synthesisers and fragmented vocal samples.
Unlike some lo-fi electronic albums, the tracks on The Work are not distinct primary colours but shades of the same pastel hue, which grow and fade in intensity. ‘The Dream’ is a particularly vibrant moment, an inventive and danceable soundscape that made me want to drive through the streets of some rainy Japanese city.
Sadly, there are times when Panda’s sonic witchery feels like a way for the producer to disguise a lack of harmonic control. Take the album’s lead single, ‘The Corner’, for example, which, despite Gold Panda’s inventive sampling of Dean Friedman’s ‘Lydia’, ends up feeling vague and derivative. Then there are tracks like ‘The Want’, which are like rollercoasters of emotion, the best of which (‘I’ve Felt Better’) swell and give way to moments of beatific euphoria.
By ‘Plastic Future’, Panda’s minimal sonic pallet is beginning to wear a little thin, marking the beginning of a particularly turbulent moment. ‘New Days’ is a fragile droplet of a thing, a lullaby for insomniacs. In contrast, ‘The Spiral’ is almost aggressive in its melancholy.
Razor-edged synths create an air of hostility, quickly pacified by the arrival of ‘Arima’. In this decidedly velvety track, aquafoam synths bubble in an endless loop, blending with sibilant wind arrangements to create a great womb of sound. ‘Chrome’ upholds this warmth, though our peace is soon shattered with the emergence of Panda’s beloved koto, marking the album’s melodic and harmonic high-point. I wish all the tracks on ‘The Work’ had this same confidence.
We end with ‘Joni’s Room’, which brings us out of Panda’s half-real world and leaves us wondering if Gold Panda intended each track to possess a distinct emotional mood or if his songs are fragments of a single emotion that we, the listener, must piece back together.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out New Music Newsletter
All the latest New Music from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.