Cool beautiful murderous plastics
Talkin' double-edged jawns and double-edged songs with electronic chune wizards Panda Bear and Sonic Boom
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Panda Bear, a.k.a. Noah Lennox — he’s been a “Blackbird Spyplane Certified Musical King” since 2004, when we first heard him do his d*mn thing as part of Animal Collective on Sung Tongs. We have continually re-certified his King Status over the years, as he started dropping slapper solo LP after slapper solo LP, singing on great Daft Punk tracks, crushing “My Girls” live, and somehow NEVER MISSING.
When we play a Panda Bear joint at Spyplane H.Q., which we do all the time, we know that his trippy combination of experimental electronic impulses with sweet pop harmonies will always fascinate and delight us 😤😤😤 !! (Some of our favorite tracks are “Mr. Noah,” “Boys Latin,” “Slow Motion,” “Take Pills,” “Dolphin,” “Bros,” “Comfy in Nautica” and “Master,” but you can also just toss on the albums and let them cook in toto, baby.)
Last week Noah put out a fantastic new album with his friend Sonic Boom, a.k.a. Pete Kember, of the legendary psych-rock band Spacemen 3. (Pete’s also put out music as E.A.R. and produced one of the dopest Beach House albums, 7.) It’s called Reset, and it’s built around a deceptively simple concept that required TRUE GIFTS & VISION to execute: For each track, they sampled and looped the opening chords of a different ‘60s rock record, freaking it into a new chune.
Case in point, the excellent Troggs-flipping “Go On,” whose video is the coolest animated clip we’ve seen in a while (second only to “Cash In Cash Out”):
The other day we hopped on the Spyphone with Noah & Pete in Portugal, where they live & where they made the new album. We talked about music that blends uplift & chaos, Lisbon hotspots, Space Age plastic design gems whose whimsical beauty coexists with their ruinous ecological toll, and how it is mad cool — not goofy, no matter what anyone tells you — to wear a pro-sports jersey with your name on it.
Blackbird Spyplane: I love how the album turned out — there’s so much character in the samples, so the music feels lush & bright but it also has this hypnotic, droning quality…
Panda Bear: “It started with Pete sending me about 30 or 40 loops — there was a lot to choose from. Whichever ones sparked me up immediately, where I had an idea right away, I’d start working on that, within about a day I’d whip out a rough sketch and send it to Pete to see what he thought. We started during lockdown, and working on music really took my mind off the chaos outside.”
Sonic Boom: “I had this realization that there were some records where, even though the intro wasn’t what the song was about, just the intro chords themselves had a lot of power to them. A lot of them were recorded by really great musicians and session dudes and they’re slick. There’s a reason they were hits.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Taking a short loop and layering new ideas on top of it, pushing it into new contexts — that’s a songwriting approach you’ll see in old dub reggae and of course in hip-hop, but it’s rare in quote-unquote indie music…
Sonic Boom: “I find that era of Jamaican music to be incredibly uplifting, and, as with Noah’s songs, when you actually listen to what the lyrics are about, it’s not happy-go-lucky stuff. It’s about tough s**t that people are dealing with. But it has this positive glow.”
Blackbird Spyplane: You both live in Lisbon — Noah since 2004, Pete for the past 6 years. I haven’t been there, but the sense I get is that it’s full of young ppl doing cool s**t and old people out by the ocean eating sardines and cheese & drinking wine all day until they die at age 105. Please tell Spy Nation about some of yr favorite spots in town…
Sonic Boom: “There’s a place that’s a bit of a tourist magnet, but for good reason, called Pavilhão Chinês — it’s a cocktail bar that doubles as a curiosity cabinet, this exquisite collection of unusual things. We actually filmed part of the Beach House video for ‘Drunk in L.A.’ there.”