British EDM producer and Pete Townshend lookalike Gold Panda walked onstage in a baggy pullover with the word SLOW written in large letters on the front. His set proved to be anything but; indeed, Panda seemed to have barely a spare moment for the next hour and a half as he flitted back and forth behind his table, his hands adjusting knobs and equalizers at lightning speed. With earnestness and practiced skill, he built layer upon layer of instrumentation and brought a wide variety of sounds to the speakers. Improvised keyboard licks looped on top of one another, courtesy of Panda’s energetic fingers, while drumrolls, stomping basslines and something that sounded like wind chimes played underneath. To the crowd’s delight, in the latter part of the show Gold Panda pulled out “You,” his most widely known track, which sped up in the end to a heart-racing freakout. The most downtempo song of the set, “If U Knew,” began as a looped melancholic female vocal that slowly dissolved into a wall of bass and noise.
Gold Panda is a relative newcomer to the electronic and DJ scene, having released his first full-length album, ‘Lucky Shiner,’ in 2010. Yet his work shows an adventurous taste, both across genres and physical borders. Both ‘Lucky Shiner’ and the 2013 follow-up ‘Half of Where You Live’ contain tracks clearly influenced by various international styles, with song titles referencing Greece, China, Japan and Brazil. A track that spun sitars, Bollywood-esque chanting and Indian instrumentation on top of a heavy bassline was easily the highlight of the night’s show. Gold Panda has demonstrated that he certainly isn’t short on ideas, and with his eyes set on such diverse parts of the music world, the results should be very interesting.
Opener Slow Magic presided over his brand of atmospheric and synth-heavy music in a light-up animal mask. (Exactly what animal, one couldn’t say. It looked like a cross between a wolf and a zebra.) He beat out rhythms on two drums set up at the front of the stage, orchestrating an intriguing and full sound that screams for a full-length album. Check out his tracks here.