Gold Panda
London, England, United Kingdom | INDIE
Music
Press
Last year, London producer Gold Panda released "Quitters Raga", an irrefutable bit of Four Tet panache that cut up vocals with enough mesmerizing skill to make our year-end list. In an interview, he told me, "It would be awful to make an album of 'Quitters Raga's because I feel like I've done it now and that's enough of that." Now there's new single "You", which features (what sounds like) cut-up vocals mesmerizing enough to remind you of the greatness of, um, "Quitters Raga". And it's not some straight-to-DVD sequel. "You" is more fine-tuned. The woolliness of "Quitters" is replaced with a sniper's exactness; the drums drift from hip-hop to the dance floor. It's a refinement. Most important, though, is how the empathetic core remains. Under GP's command, all that waveform slicing boils down to (what sounds like) three words: "you and me." Intimidatingly technical; furiously simple. Never enough of that. - Pitchfork (www,pitchforkmedia.com)
Gold Panda is a left-field producer and remixer called Derwin who makes instrumental soundtracks to half-remembered, dreamy summer days. He scours charity shops for old records and VHS tapes to turn into distorted samples, and wraps them in minimal, warm beats.
He is obsessed with Japan and its culture, and once sold his entire record collection to pay for a Japanese diploma at the School of Oriental and African Studies, before moving there for a year. - BBC (www.bbc.co.uk)
Discography
Miyamae EP (Various)
Quitters Raga (Make Mine)
Before EP (Puregroove)
You (NOTOWN)
Photos
Bio
GOLD PANDA – BIOGRAPHY APRIL 2010
Hailing from Chelmsford in Essex, but a resident of East London for some time now, Gold Panda started writing beats and collaborating a few years ago, working with the likes of Infinite Livez and Shuttle (both Ninja Tune) as well as creating his own material.
Having spent downtime behind the counters of various establishments he consolidated the rest of his hours creating archives of electronic music; each track different from the other, incorporating multitudes of styles and disparate influences and obscure samples and base material. Having sated the need to create these volumes of material, he poked his head into the world by way of a collection of instantaneously raved-about remixes, that quickly found the interested of various labels, blogs and taste makers, leading to requests for him to re-edit the likes of Little Boots, Telepathe, Bloc Party, Simian Mobile Disco, Health and The Field.
In the meantime, Gold Panda began culling his back-archive of material for a series of low key releases: the first was ‘Miyamae’, a 12” on Various, followed by the ‘Quitters Raga’ 7” on Make Mine, and the third, ‘Before’ was released digitally and on 250 limited CDs via Puregroove. Now having essentially cleared the decks (bar the 100+ tracks that may one day creep into the open as he sees fit), 2010 will see Gold Panda releasing his debut album and pushing on and consolidating his quickly burgeoning reputation as one of the brightest names in the electronic scene.
2010 started with a bang, after being named one of BBC’s Sound of 2010 contenders. The early part of the year saw the release of those three Eps as a single album in Japan alongside live shows there. May 2010 will see the release of his first new material of the year – the equisite You EP on his NOTOWN label. Preceeding that is a full European tour with psychedelic luminaries Caribou.
What does Gold Panda sound like? One writer claimed that: “He intuitively mixes lop sided, chopped up hip hop style beats with a gorgeous refined melodic techno sensibility creating a fresh cross genre sound that’s distinct and accomplished.” Which sounds pretty good, so let’s go with that.
The music he has released thus far is influenced by a year spent living in Japan, as well as B movies on vhs video, minimal techno and hip hop, and all these influences bleed into his sound. An avowed lover of Japanese culture and it’s lifestyle, Gold Panda spend two years at the renowned School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS) learning to read and write Japanese.. With new material, live shows and ultimately a defining long-player to come, the next 12 months should be hugely fruitful in the immersive world of Gold Panda.
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