Panda Bear: Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper (Domino)
Not to be confused with Polar Bear (British purveyors of off-kilter electro-jazz and persistent Mercury Prize nominees) or Gold Panda (London-based electronica artist Derwin Schlecker), Panda Bear is the solo side-project of Lisbon-based American Noah Lennox, founder of critically-acclaimed Baltimore four-piece Animal Collective. With nine albums and almost as many EPs in the last 15 years, they're already prolific even before you consider Lennox's own output - this is his fifth solo album.
Fans of Jamaican dub will recognise in Lennox's title a nod to the famous Augustus Pablo/King Tubby collaboration King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown, and the American has admitted his liking for the seminal 1976 album. And it's an appropriate title too given the sound-clash feel of PBMTGR, which pits Lennox's pop-inclined psychedelia against the throbbing, pulsing and oscillating interruptions of producer Pete Kember. Formerly of 1980s acid rockers Spacemen 3, Kember now goes by the nom de guerre Sonic Boom. Again, it's an appropriate moniker and his contribution gives the album the feel of a remix project.
That, though, is Lennox's intention and the results are referred to by him, rather gleefully, as "the soup". But think of it as a broth rather than a consommé: nothing here is clear. So opener Sequential Circuits is washed over with what sounds like running water while current single Mr Noah comes with added wolf howls and phased distortion. Sometimes there's no tune at all, just seconds-long interludes of electronic dissonance as on Davy Jones' Locker and Shadow Of The Colossus. Sometimes the melodies do outmuscle the smothering sound affects and come shining through, as on the ethereal Tropic Of Cancer. On other occasions - most notably on penultimate track Selfish Gene - both qualities come together in a tuneful and synchronous rhythmic stomp to produce something you could almost call club-friendly.
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