Gold Panda: Lucky Shiner

    I was just introduced to Gold Panda today through an old blog post from IndieRockCafe.com, and I immediately felt after only listening to one song that Derwin Panda had struck gold. Derwin was born in Peckham, London, and lives in Chelmsford, Essex (eastern UK). OK, so what is so interesting about yet another electronica group from Britain? Gold Panda studied and lived in Japan for two years, studying at the School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS), and this influence can clearly be heard through the use of Chinese, Japanese and Indian melodic material and instrumentation; which can be considered neofolk.        
    Other influences for Derwin include: working at record stores and compiling countless hours of samples and various genres of music; "B movies on his VHS", to quote his website; minimal techno and hip-hop (hip-hop being pretty much the historical basis for all electronic music).
    Exploring Gold Panda's genre a little more, it is clearly Electronica or IDM (Intelligent Dance Music), the latter being a term not so readily accepted by many British artists. Aphex Twin, for example, minimized IDM as "peculiar to the U.S.". Either way, IDM arose out of techno and emphasizes individual experimentation more than a set of genre specific characteristics. So, it is more expansive. The term, IDM, came from an electronic mailing list back in 1993, which was started in order to discuss music between mainly English artists who were included on the compilation album Artificial Intelligence (1992, Warp Records). Electronica has largely become the replacement term for IDM and is similar in meaning, because of its emphasis on multiple genres instead of any specific one.
    Glitch is a genre that was popular in the 1990s, and is basically what the word means, electronic glitches of any sort, except intentionally used as part of the music in this case. Some sites I saw considered Gold Panda to be lo-fi, and I think glitch would better describe their style.
    Proceeding, briefly, with experimental, downtempo and neofolk, I will suggest that the first two are fairly self-explanatory and I will not say anything about them; but, neofolk, I feel obligated to say that I do not necessarily agree with this label, partially because Gold Panda is so heavily electronica, but also because neofolk suggests more of a classical or even acoustic style.
    I will leave the reader with one last thought, without much being said about any individual track or the music itself--more so a framework to approach Lucky Shine within--, that the album cover is so fitting. The horizontal color stripes of different shades point themselves out like glitches, the fireworks and Japanese influenced art reveal the folk inclusion, the sublime blue hue suggests the downtempo, and the city scape and collection of visual thoughts as a whole produce the experimental-slash-industrial (or electronic) nature of the album--along with the journey the road bridge will take the listener on.
    There are three digital bonus tracks, if purchased on Gold Panda's Ghostly International record label's website here. I have uploaded the track, "Same Dream China" from their September 2010 full debut, Lucky Shiner to the MixPod. Normally, I hate uploading a track that you can find streaming on another site, but in this case it was the first I heard and thoroughly hope it will have the same impulsive pull on you. Enjoy!