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| Sputnikmusic |
 Summary: With every small release throughout 2009 and the first half of 2010, Gold Panda sure struck up quite a bit of interest. His debut album Lucky Shiner continues on justifying his potential, displaying an interesting mix of fresh ideas.With every small release throughout 2009 and the first half of 2010, Gold Panda sure struck up quite a bit of interest. Releases of Quitter’s Raga, You and Back Home all garnered praise, and were fully deserving of any curiosity they piqued. Even featuring on a couple remix albums by Bloc Party & Ewan Pearson, Gold Panda has kept popping up with tastes of his hefty potential. Nearly a month after its digital release, his debut album Lucky Shiner hasn’t exactly launched off as it should, though the praise received from indie bloggers and review sites is deserved. For those unaware, British artist Gold Panda compares most closely to artists like Four Tet & The Field. His down-tempo style is perfectly displayed in the opening track You, where chopped vocals serve as the hook over an evolving beat. There is no attachment to a single genre in the album, by no means conforming to any style of house, breakbeat or techno beats. Marriage opens with sweet synth layers, before the steady beat launches the track forward about 50 seconds in. The song phases in layers of oriental textures for a few bars, before fading out and being replaced by new ideas. In essence Marriage just builds different ideas on top of a repeating simple synth layer. Where some electronic artists suffer by driving home only a couple ideas throughout an entire six minute piece, much of Lucky Shiner is in constant movement from the beginning to end of each song. Where the first You has chopped up vocals, track eleven (also titled You) stretches out the vocal sample atop soft synths and a reforming beat. Others such as Snow & Taxis and Vanilla Minus push forward at a quicker pace, with the former hitting a couple of sweet spots and driving the mix of layers for a few bars before giving way to fresh combinations. In moments like these, Lucky Shiner feels like a brother of The Field’s From Here We Go Sublime but with contrasting song structures. At the heart of it these songs succeed in the same way as the two You tracks, presenting a few simple layers in an ever-transforming series of blends....full text |
| Horrorshowtunez |
| I’m going to get straight to the point, I’m that excited. The much loved Gold Panda, is streaming his soon to be debut up on, www.luckyshiner.com. I like it when an album is streamed first, it shows the artist isn’t relying on hype to boost their album sales, and they are keen to get feedback. Gold Panda’s “Lucky Shiner” is true to its name, more so the shiner, every track is as fresh as the last. The track-listing goes; You Vanilla Minus Parents Same Dream China Snow & Taxis Before We Talked Marriage After We Talked I’m With You But I’m Lonely After We Talked India Lately You It’s odd, Gold Panda, does not incorporate any vocals of his own, nor does he write lyrics, but the album manages to tell a story. This may be seen from the track-listing, but also in the music. I don’t like to look too deeply into music, but I really did feel it with this album. The album starts with the blinding track that is “You”, which sets the scene for album to take place upon. Which moves onto what I can see as being a track that will get played in a few mixes, “Vanilla Minus”, the most distinctly dance fueled track, that has this killer stabbing synth, the main structure of which the track is built on. It also has this string like synth that sounds ever so oriental, giving it a nice feel to the track. We’ve then got “Parents” which is an acoustic track with a natural ambience over it, almost like a break after the intense sounds we got from “Vanilla Minus”. “Same Dream China” is kind of where the album starts to take off, with the fast paced glockenspiel and fragmented oriental sample, similar to that of “Quitters Raga”. It moves on to “Snow & Taxis” which has a nice bass and bell thing going on, making it a loud track but with a softer feel to it. Check out the video here. “Before We Talked”, has this spitting bleep fueled beat, and gameboy style synth, which in a subtle way creates tension. Not like the tension you’d find to building up to a drop, but like tension you’d find in Hollyoaks, except far better. “Marriage”, is definitely one to listen to, it has this fairly old school synth at the beginning, which perhaps shows Gold Panda’s 90′s dance roots, if there are any. You can definitely see Gold Panda’s obsession with oriental culture, with a chinese guitar riff that gives the song a certain feel to it. Its a good combo, one that isn’t heard enough in the electronic music scene. A track like “I’m With You But I’m Lonely” has this distinct chill, its quiet and ambient, something you’d like to hear at a sunrise, yet it has this scatty drum over the top, which makes for an interesting mix of chill and upbeat electronica. Then there’s “After We Talked”, which sounds similar to an Atari having a little moment to its self. The rustling tape deck like sounds are used like a synth, giving it that vinyl essence. What’s really great about this album is that it incorporates all sides of experimental electronica and creating a sick dance track. This is shown best through “India Lately”, which has various samples playing into each other, over a bass fueled beat that drives the track to its live drum climax. Finally “You”, so nice he used it twice. The second version of “You” is far more dance orientated, and has a lower “you” excerpt, its got a little bit of a DJ Shadow feel to it, with its rainy hissy and minor strings. The variety of samples you hear in “Lucky Shiner” is refreshing, its something we are hearing a lot more in contemporary electronica, artists are searching further for that killer sample that makes the album. In the case of Gold Panda, every track has that sample. Rivaling that of Four Tet and Koushik, I’m sure that Gold Panda will be around for a long time. Make sure you sign up to the mailing list to receive “Snow & Taxis” free, and hopefully find out where Gold Panda’s playing, cause that is something you do not want to miss....full text |
| Cokemachineglow |
| As the world slowly reverts to the pre-album era and Sufjan Stevens’s greatest fears are realized, as the LP is less and less able to define an artist’s sound, a fan’s investment in music takes on a different form: it’s more immediate, more omnivorous, more like a one night stand. Enter Gold Panda, an East London producer who’s built a fine little career off of singles; enter Lucky Shiner, a surprisingly subtle album given Panda’s roots, with songs peppered by variety more technical than showy. Kid’s got guts; just ask Voxtrot—something like this could end it all. Gold Panda’s singles suggested many possible directions, and one of the saving graces of this, his debut album, is that the producer manages to maintain the same untethered feeling perpetrated by his smaller releases. There aren’t any lucky breaks on hand like the incredible sample that anchored his breakout single “Quitters Raga”; instead there’s a rock-solid collection of pleasant, drifting instrumentals. Opener “You” takes the vocals of “Raga” further into Oval territory, all without sacrificing the found hooks that make such things work. Past that, Lucky Shiner gets better produced and less memorable, the work of someone who is willing to sacrifice immediate gratification for a shot at not being the blog version of Fatboy Slim. In other words: this is album as document of growing up in public, the inevitable recognition that the success of a single often boils down to some cheap thrills. The glitchy house of “Before We Talked” sounds like it came from any kid with Reason and a Myspace page, but its context makes it seem more like a step in a positive direction from Panda’s early work. “Vanilla Minus” does the same thing, but with better drums, and the strings and bells of “Snow & Taxis” make an excellent foil for the thin 808s that bands like Salem have turned into a weirdly ironic love letter to mainstream rap. Around those songs, new Gold Panda modes are invented: Reichian vibraphones on “Same Dream China” and “I’m With You But I’m Lonely”; a straight-up acoustic guitar breather on “Parents”; pensive beats and layers of synths on “Marriage” and “After We Talked.” The final two songs, “India Lately” and another song called “You,” combine all of these elements—the vocal-chopping, bigger beats, bigger synths, atmospheric stuffs—into what might not necessarily be a eureka moment but what exists as the most technically accomplished run Gold Panda’s executed so far....full text |
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