Lucky Shiner - Gold Panda

Lucky Shiner

Gold Panda
Ghostly International.

SCQ Rating: 79%

This summer’s remix-heavy You EP, although enjoyable primarily for its few original tracks, seemed incapable of telling us what Gold Panda was really about. Sure, the title track suggested a beatsmith with the melodic ear of Four Tet while ‘Peaky Caps’ and ‘Killing Yourself On a Beach’ obsessed themselves with micro-house tinkering, but Lucky Shiner illustrates a much more thorough outline of Gold Panda’s strengths and intentions. ‘You’, which prefaces this debut full-length no differently than that cloaked EP, remains the poppiest effort here, but it’s a sugary appetizer compared to Lucky Shiner’s heady bulk.

That opener’s milking of repetition sounds elementary once ‘Vanilla Minus’ peppers over the speakers like a millisecond of Detroit techno spliced and thrown off-axis into an oscillating synth-line. Samples are incorporated patiently, not so patiently as to snowball into eight-minute decadence, but subtle enough for these disparaging pieces to fit snugly within half the time. Imagine hearing the euphoria of The Field but without Axel Willner ever coasting; that’s the Gold Panda M.O. That adventurous take on The Field’s love of repetition inspires a handful of other highlights here, from the stabs of trance like passing headlights on ‘Snow and Taxis’ to the bending momentum of ‘Marriage’’s club-hook.

Perhaps it’s because Gold Panda’s focus on textures tend to override the presence of any prominent bass, but Lucky Shiner – despite its BPM earnings – isn’t made for the dance-floor. Surrounding those upbeat bouts of jubilation are less concrete permutations of electronic songwriting, resulting in the micro-note armies behind ‘I’m With You But I’m Lonely’. The split duo of ‘Before We Talked’ and ‘After We Talked’ stray further from Lucky Shiner’s breathtaking first half; the former would’ve fared better sticking to its morning ambience undertow than tacking a hokey half-melody on top, and the latter track never gathers enough steam to jump beyond its sluggish core.

At Lucky Shiner’s optimal, Gold Panda motions electronic-pop toward a threshold that’s equally melancholic and joyous, with a technique both tender and visceral. ‘Same Dream China’ and ‘India Lately’ even advance his nonchalant approach to worldly influences by pitting deft beats against timeless organic instruments which, sampled or not, deepen the beauty of this collection. It’s certainly one of the better electronic records this year, but I wholeheartedly believe Gold Panda will top this sometime stunning but unbalanced debut.

You EP - Gold Panda

You EP

Gold Panda
Ghostly International.

SCQ Rating: 76%

As enthralling as the artist behind Gold Panda has crafted himself an identity - mixing extroverted vibes with a stranger’s mystique - it has been difficult to see the man’s releases as anything but virtual mirages on this American side of the pond. Images of his cover-art are commonplace but track-listings and street-dates have been harder to pin down; even on Gold Panda’s Myspace page, most releases were accompanied by 2010 and a series of question marks. Having spent the past few months finessing his fan-base on tour-circuits, Gold Panda looks eager to make this his breakthrough year with You EP (released by Ghostly International here in North America).

Although the physical 12” only carries two Gold Panda tracks (the digital version bears an additional bonus track and both versions offer remixes galore), You EP pays greater dividends than simply being a widely released physical memento. Beyond the title track’s immediate catchiness – think an emotionally charged take on Four Tet’s ‘Smile Around the Face’ – Gold Panda shows range with the house-frosted minimalism of ‘Peaky Caps’ and the frozen glitches hiding a warm melody on ‘Killing Yourself On a Beach’ (on digital version only). Although ‘You’ is gathering due attention for Gold Panda’s craft, my admiration tends to gravitate toward these other originals; both versatile in mood and BPM while never leaning on easy hooks, expansiveness could be Gold Panda's future M.O.

Now typically I’m the kind of listener who gets as excited about remixes as he does about taking out the recycling, yet these ‘You’ remixes easily double the EP’s playability. Surely it helps when a group of top-shelf remixers are on board, each capable of throwing fresh curveballs from their sleeves. Recent tour-mate Seams loops a fragment of the original into this hypnotic display of incidental harmonics before letting the song’s stuttering hook loose of the haze. Next up is Osborne’s remix, which duct-tapes Gold Panda’s track in a suitcase and morphs it over a worldly voyage of soft club grooves and a wonderfully off-kilter keyboard solo. Additional (but digital-only) remixes by Dam Mantle and Minotaur Shock highlight the single in continuously unique ways, calling attention to their own knack for melody while propping Gold Panda’s. Finding no shortage of ways to explore a single cut without ruining the original, these remixers help flesh out Gold Panda’s underhyped sonic chops. Although Ghostly’s 12”, in limited copies and beautifully packaged, is for many a first chance to grab Gold Panda’s music in the physical sense, it’s hard to refute the extra perks offered by the digital version. Lucky for you, dear reader, neither choice will leave you disappointed.