Gold Panda - An Iceberg Hurled Northward Through Clouds

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from the 2010 Guardian First Album Award winner Gold Panda but yesterday a new track - An Iceberg Hurled Northward Through Clouds – emerged and clocked up virtually 8000 plays on his Soundcloud player before the day was out. This shows how far Gold Panda has come since we first caught him live in a half empty Brighton pub a couple of years back.

An Iceberg Hurled Northward Through Clouds opens the latest of the DJ Kicks albums, a legendary series, which this time finds Gold Panda himself at the controls. Full of gentle clicks and twinkling bell sounds this is ambient, soothing but still with enough pulse to get the head nodding and the body grooving. This is a blissful way to start your day - we could play this on repeat over and over.

You can never have enough bells in pop music. Fact: 80’s synth pop star Howard Jones debut LP had a bell of some sort on every track on the album. The Cure's greatest album Disintegration also opened with the sound of bells chiming. Maybe this is where Viva Brother went wrong - not enough bells - take note potential music artists of the future.

An Iceberg Hurled Northward Through Clouds by Gold Panda

The Saturday Surf #9

With constant offers of sex from gorgeous online PR media types to hanging around back stage drinking champagne with some of the planet’s biggest buzz bands, the life of a high profile music blogger really is all about living the dream isn’t it?

And a dream is all it will ever be for Breaking More Waves as we continue our existence as a small scale, independent and old-school music blog. From our basic back-in-the-day domain address and Blogspot layout template with no fancy design aesthetic, to our lack of no more than twenty words artily cool thesaurus heavy posts with accompanying blurry video. Breaking More Waves remains what it is, doing what it does, with no bigger ambitions, no plans to become a record label, no goal to become ‘a big blog’, no vision of building some sort of career or revenue from what we do here and with absolutely no desire to be in with the in crowd. We’ve said it hundreds of times before, but ‘cool’ is transient and not something we’re interested in.

Our mission is simple – to love music and write about the music we love in a style that reflects the authors personality rather than some attempt at pseudo-journalism. Hopefully you’ll share some of that love.

So let’s get metaphorically naked and go skinny dipping through a few of the musical waves that have got us a little shivery this week, in our weekly feature The Saturday Surf. There’s plenty to catch up on, but as always we’re limiting the number of tracks to a manageable handful.

Zola Jesus – Vessel

The track that a lot of the internet has gone crazy for this week is the first release from the forthcoming Zola Jesus album Conatus, due September 26. Her previous album Stridulum II was in our top ten albums of 2010 and it also featured in the UK Bloggers Top 50 albums of the year poll. Vessel is no radical departure from songs on this previous work, although it places more emphasis on mechanical rhythms – like a factory in a bad mood. UK fans can catch her this year at The Big Chill, Field Day, Bestival and End of the Road Festival.

Zola Jesus - Vessel

Babe Rainbow – Set Loose

It’s over a year since we last mentioned Babe Rainbow and his horrow-show spooked-out electronica. This new work taken from his recently released Endless Path EP on Warp is surprisingly warm, and blissful, treading along a lusher ambient path, dare we mention the word chill-wave ? Or is that now considered so geekily-limp-wristed-male-student-smoking-joints-in-his-bedroom that it would be time to shut this blog down forever?

Babe Rainbow - "Set Loose" taken from Endless Path EP - OUT NOW

Gold Panda - MPB

Further electronic wizardry comes in the form of this new tune from Breaking More Waves favourite Gold Panda, which rather like Zola Jesus has pushed the internet and Hype Machine into meltdown. As you'd expect from Gold Panda MPB displays all sorts of oddball disjointedness yet never loses flow. Roll on album number 2. Have some of it. Now.

MPB by Gold Panda

Boxes – Throw Your Stones

Delicate beats, a reference to With or Without You by U2, hints of The Postal Service and a subtle melody that decides to go a bit doo-wollop in the middle section. Throw Your Stones by London’s Boxes is more of a graceful flight on a glider with a tiny bit of turbulence thrown in than a sonic jet ride, its gently affecting turns taking on the role of an indie electro-acoustic security blanket. Repeated listens will make you feel even more comfortable and you might just want to wrap yourself up in its light musical warmth.

Boxes - Throw Your Stones

Creature - So High

This week, we’ve left our favourite till last. So High by living it up Canadian group Creature is 47% Blondie 34% Goldfrapp and 19% Donna Summer. It is also 100% amazing. They also have another song Prom Prom the chorus of which goes “It’s prom prom, you’re a lesbian,” which is probably the best or worst lyric you've ever heard depending on your perspective, until they follow it up later on the track with “She’s a lezzie, now let her be a lezzie.” You can hear that teen coming out pop-drama by clicking here.

So High - Creature

That completes this Saturday Surf. Musical skinny dipping that sets you free. Shall we do it again next week? See you down on the beach then and we’ll break some waves together.

Gold Panda - Snow & Taxis

Ever since we first laid hands on Gold Panda’s Before CD last year, we’ve been pretty convinced that his jittery spectrum of minimalist electronic glitch-techno is of the highest order. His next single - Snow & Taxis taken from forthcoming album Lucky Shiner (apparently named after his grandmother) seals the deal. Sounding like tinkerbell going to the disco Snow & Taxis has a hushed hop-skippity winter-based dance flow that works as well as home as it does on the more intelligent dance floors. This is seems in keeping with Gold Panda's recent announcement in respect of the album that "I didn't want bangers, I wanted songs with structure."

After his final UK festival appearance for the year at Green Man, Gold Panda aka Derwin, the Japanese culture obsessed hooded geekoid, will be flying stateside for a lengthly tour where America can witness his blend of knob-twiddling laptop-bobbing fun. Here's Snow & Taxis.

Snow & Taxis by Gold Panda

Lounge on the Farm 2010 - Review

There’s a very relaxed vibe to Lounge on the Farm festival, Merton Farm near Canterbury. The sun helps this atmosphere - it shines powerfully all day, but the new local authority licensing restriction that limits punters bringing their own alcohol onto site is also a significant factor. With the smell of cow pats not far away and a market area that retails only locally produced food (even the farm itself sells edibles made from its own livestock - a properly sustainable burger that hasn't travelled hundreds of miles in production) Lounge on the Farm has a welcoming local / village feel. Inflatable cows hang from the steel frame of the huge cowshed that forms the main stage and punters sit by the bandstand at picnic benches soaking up the rays and enjoying delicacies such as kipper in a bun and Russian stuffed vine leaves - not your typical festival food.

Whilst the majority were in attendance for the full three days, Breaking More Waves was at Lounge on the Farm 2010 for just one day; the motive being that Moshi Moshi and Wichita Records host the small Sheepdip Stage on the Saturday.

Things open at the Cowshed Stage with a sample from Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped. As the words “I ain’t gonna take it no more,” boom out Liverpool’s Kids On Bridges plough through a short set of booming chest vibrating electro-pop. The band seem totally out of place with the general organic vibe of the event with members sporting a blue metallic hoody, bleached blonde hair, sportswear and shades. The skewered slabs of disco synth on Check Your Head add a sprinkle of gold dust, but it’s just too damn early for most. A case of wrong place wrong time.

Alice Gold fares a little better - flicking her golden locks backwards and forwards in a demented fashion to her blend of adult friendly FM rock - although her strong passionate voice loses something in the empty echoing heights of the cowshed.

A walk past the farms flag lined sweet corn fields leads to the sunflower covered bandstand where The Momeraths are giving a gentle lesson in everything twee and lower case. Xylophones, quietly cute vocals and summery girl-boy melodies, they’re like the long lost cousins of Belle and Sebastian circa Tigermilk, and go down rather well with the sun-kissed crowd who are busy consuming Kent ice cream and cider.

Heading under canvas, The Sheepdip Stage is where the too cool for school fashionista’s can be found. In sweltering and rising temperatures of 30 degrees centigrade there are kids here wearing retro jumpers - they’ve either left their brain in another field or have a very good deodorant. Veronica Falls try to bring the temperatures down by adding icy attitude with their lo-fi early 80’s U.S styled indie garage rock, complete with shambling guitars, flatly sung female vocals and pouting red lips. There’s a significant number of bands mining the C86 gone stateside genre right now, and Veronica falls are digging with the rest of them. One for the old-school indie elite.

“You’re such an attractive festival crowd - I thought you were all going to mingers,” announces the leopard print clad Elizabeth Sankey of Summer Camp with a smile as the band begin their experimental pop. No doubt after three days of sun and cider by Sunday evening there will be less beauty and more mingers. Summer Camp get only moments in before the sound cuts out. A few minutes of frantic action by sound technicians sort the problem and the band recommence their woozy Beach Boys influenced synth-layered pop. The band are motionless verging on invisible and it's left to Elizabeth to be the star of the show, her voice clean with an almost country-esque twang. There’s a charm to what Summer Camp do, even though occasionally they let muso cleverness get in the way of pop sensibility. If they can keep the shackles on they could be as beautiful as the audience.

Swedish sister duo First Aid Kit draw the biggest audience of the day so far -albeit it’s still bums on grass at this point - and are incredible. Johanna and Klara have a raw, enchanting quality in their live performance that as yet they have not fully replicated in recorded form. Using just delicately picked acoustic guitar, autoharp, keyboard and drums their sound is quietly romantic - their mournful harmonies sounding agedly ghostlike. When they sing acappella “I don’t know what I’ve done, but I’m turning myself into a demon,” on Tiger Mountain Pleasant Song it’s breathtakingly moving. Ending with rich majesty of I Met Up With The King, their voices in turn gravely and lullaby smooth, it’s no wonder that the crowd applaud for an encore.

Besides the pullover wearing indie boys Australia’s Sarah Blasko has also arrived in the Cow Shed from the school of inappropriate festival attire. Wearing a blue tartan dress and leggings she announces “I didn’t realise it could get this hot in England.” Despite her fashion fail she is quirkily engaging with her puppet-like dancing, unselfconscious marching and note perfect songs - the spectral wail on All I Want is particularly affecting, a snow capped misty mountain romance, even on this sweltering day.

It’s inevitable when the weather is this warm that this is going to be the main talking point of the day, and so it continues. “Has anyone got sunburn?” questions Rebecca from Slow Club as a packed Sheepdip tent slowly melts. Slow Club are never going to be a slick pop band - their ramshackle unpolished country-rock-folk -skiffle style is part of their charm. Today at least they manage to get through their set of both old and new songs without any of them breaking down halfway - that in itself is a result for them. From yelling gang hollers to sweet harmonies Slow Club have it easy - most of the crowd are ready to lap it up, even if Rebecca notices that one man in the crowd is screwing up his eyes and shaking his head negatively - she suggests he’s right though - “essentially, we’re shit,” she mocks. Songs such as Trophy Room with it’s acoustic thrash and pensive “Oh oh oh,” sighs oppose this argument -the single man in the crowd was wrong.

The top end of the site pays host to the Farm Folk stage, where a mellow crowd rests on hay bales under pink drapes. Looking like a younger David Bowie or James Dean, Alan Pownall and his band play a set of fine well crafted songs that are perfect for this near sunset moment. His sound is warm and mature, laced with violin and gentle percussion. Occasionally there’s a reggae lilt to his tunes, elsewhere they’re of the more heartfelt singer songwriter style. Explaining to the audience that he was late getting here due to traffic, it seems his journey was worthwhile.

As night falls the Sheepdip stage alters its musical direction from indie / folk / pop to vibrant electronic geekiness. The numbers in the tent dwindle, but it leaves more room for dancing. “At least my nails had time to dry,” jokes a member of Silver Columns after a late start due to the dreaded technical hitches. With flashing lights all over their microphones and kit, their relentless electronic burbles sound a lot like a humorous high energy Hot Chip, and on Brow Beaten -a song which really deserves a shot at the charts re-release -a modern day Bronski Beat. Bridging the gap between audience and stage, one of their number hauls a drum into the crowd and plays from the floor to the bemused faces of onlookers.

Gold Panda continues the geek-core dance revolution wearing a T shirt emblazoned with a Tampax logo. Waves of ambient noise give way to gentle electronic chimes, crackles and then stuttering jerky beats of brilliance. His futuristic flow gets the crowd dancing spaz-like - by the time he wraps things up with Quitters Raga the temperature has been cranked up a notch again.

It’s left to James Yuill to finish the small crowd who remain off. We’ve called James the thinking mans Calvin Harris before, and this seems to be truer than ever. The bespectacled high priest of geek electronica rolls out electro-pop / folktronica bangers by the bagful under a beautiful vision of kaleidoscopic slides. It may now be midnight, the temperatures may have cooled outside, but Yuill ensures that Lounge on the Farm continues to sweat it’s head off until the very end of the day.

Lounge on the Farm 2010 - what an absolute scorcher.

You can see more photos from Lounge On The Farm 2010 by clicking here.

Great Escape 2010 @ Brighton - Review (Day 2)

With the promise of more sun by the seaside, spending the whole day in dark nightclubs, pubs and other such venues is not such an attractive proposition. Thankfully The Great Escape provides for a number of outdoor gigs.

A carport forms an amateur makeshift d-i-y stage in the ray-drenched courtyard of Shipwrights Yard, where the Republic of Music and Skint Records present a varied showcase of artists. Yet there’s nothing amateur about The Miserable Rich. They have a beautiful elegance, grace and composure in their songs that often reference substance abuse. “They call me a pisshead, but what do they know, there’s more love in this head, than these eyes can show,” sings lead vocalist James as their cellist downs a can of Scrumpy Jack. Violin, acoustic guitar, hand bells and the aforementioned cello combine to create warm, affecting and highly charismatic songs.

Watched by both Norman Cook aka Fatboy Slim and Egyptian Hip Hop the odd ball quirkiness, blonde mop top, vacant stare and warbling Syd Barret-esque psychedelic weirdness of Connan Mockasin is an acquired taste but receives love from a significant number of the audience. Childlike, almost a joke gone wrong, the songs he plays are dreamy, hazy and just one joint away from being utterly surreal.

“This is our first gig in the sunshine, we’re not usually of a very sunny disposition,” suggest Mirrors (pictured) as the rhythmic pulse of Fear of Drowning rings out over the courtyard. Certainly their angst-ridden ambient electro pop shouldn’t work in the daylight and the addition of sharp suits, dark shirts, ties and attempt of using a strobe in broad daylight should fail dramatically, but it doesn’t. With their vocalist adding some skinny boy camp robot dancing it seems that Mirrors emergence into the light is a good thing.

As the ever expanding audience enjoy the weather there are two things that strike immediately about Tigs, the lead singer of Chew Lips. First that she exudes self confidence, pulling shapes and chatting to the audience as if they were her new best friends, the second that she carries a superb vocal - a soulful Karen O singing perfectly over layered digital pop. This girl can really sing, without seeming to ever try too hard. Slick, with its plentiful bounty of beeps and builds is particularly gilt-edged. The Great Escape may be an indoor festival, but sometimes dancing in the afternoon sun is the top-drawer way to go.

As evening slowly approaches The Futureheads play a not so secret ‘secret’ show on the porch roof of the entrance to Audio. The set is punchy, urgent and short, the band appearing to be somewhat befuddled by the unusual setting of the gig which sees them raised up significantly higher than the crowd and surrounded by palm trees. “This is very strange isn’t it? You can probably see right up my nose into my brain,” jokes lead singer Barry. As second wave indie brit rock / landfill indie has died a death it’s important to note that The Futureheads remain a going concern. It’s easy to be complacent about their concise new wave sound, but they are still a sharp and impassioned band. Still not afraid to give the punters what they want they end with their cover of Hounds of Love (see video below) and skip away into the sunset.

Coalition welcomes the space drums, synth washes and robot vocals of Polish three piece Kamp! Heading for planet future-retro pop their danceable grooves hint at French house and colder German electronica. It slowly draws people in to the darkness and dancing.

Dancing is something that you might expect from an audience watching Gold Panda. Or at least some significant head nodding. Yet Life is so oppressively rammed that even the chopped samples and loops of You cannot make people move - probably because they can’t. Nine months ago Gold Panda played in Brighton (here) and about forty people were there to witness it. How times have changed.

Back in Coalition Wolf Gang brings a menagerie of influences and mixes them all up to give a modern pop context - hints of David Byrne, eccentric indie pop and possibly even first album MGMT can be heard. Standing infront of an illuminated white cube with his name on it, a white scarf draped around his neck, Wolf Gang (real name Max McElligott ) is at his best when he’s creating big sing-a-long pop songs such as The King And All Of His Men, which despite being a hit track on many of the hip blogs has a mainstream sensibility written all over it that suggests it wouldn’t be out of place on BBC Radio 2.

As the night continues its time for Hurts. For the third time this year they overwhelm us with their melodramatic theatrical brilliance. Opera singer. Check. Theo Hutchcraft staring moodily at the floor. Check. Affected use of the hand in pocket. Check. Vampire cheekbones. Check. Almost Nazi-esque outstretched hand. Check. Sensuously fingering the microphone stand. Check. Slicked hair and suits. Check. Yet aside from the image, all of the calculated pretension, all of the things that make Hurts visually so appealing to some and annoy the hell out of others, they have a collection of grandly brilliant pop songs. And at the Great Escape, unlike the NME tour where at some venues Hurts found some punters drifting away as they played, the band have the audience in their hands, or rather most of them - Drowned in Sound in an entirely predictable way tweeted that Hurts were gut sucking. By the time Better Than Love blasts in in a wave of strobe light euphoria, Hurts are riding the crest of the wave. Theo even has a wry smile on his face. He knows this is vindication. “Do you ever feel emptiness, are you scared it’s going to last forever?” Theo questions at the start of Happiness. Despite what some have been suggesting, the sound of Hurts is not empty at all. This is how all great pop music should be. Triumphant.

Still in Coalition Kid Adrift have a difficult job to follow and unfortunately suffer serious technical difficulties. They only have stage monitors for two songs, half their rig cuts out and one drunken member of the audience feels it necessary to shout abuse at them. Yet the band persevere and ultimately deliver with waves of beats, complex crescendos of piano and extreme bombastic rock sounds. Imagine Muse suddenly discovering processed heavy beats on a laptop, and you would be somewhere close with Kid Adrift. There’s an element of prog-rock pomposity to what Kid Adrift do, but there’s a magnificence to their pomp that is refreshingly exciting.

Gold Panda - You

When the BBC Sound Of 2010 list was published at the beginning of the year, as usual the critical negatives waded in with their usual “What a load of rubbish,” comments. But once the cynics had gone away and you took a step back and looked at the full list of nominations, it was possible to see that not only had it picked up on acts that had a high chance of commercial success such as Ellie Goulding, but had brought attention to some of the most exciting underground musical acts around today. The act who really stood out for Breaking More Waves was Gold Panda, who had caught our ears with his sliced up laptop samples on his mini album Before and his crackling cartoonish Quitters Raga. We’d managed to check him out live (here) and featured him as a new wave (here). His disjointed laptop romancing appealed to our inner geek.

Now Gold Panda is back with a new single entitled You. It very much continues where Quitters Raga left off but with less crackles and mess. If anything it feels taughter, tighter and sharper than Quitters Raga, and whilst that track very much fell into the category of 'dance music for hip beard-strokers that you can’t really dance to', we can almost wiggle and sway a little to You. We’re thinking the word here is “Tune!” Take this one out. You can purchase You here

You by Gold Panda

Gold Panda - New Waves @ Breaking More Waves

This is a bit of a cheat. Normally New Waves @ Breaking More Waves means a new artist who is toothpaste fresh to this blog. Yet Gold Panda sneaked in early, serving up a starter in August here. So now let's break the rules and make it time for main course; something that's waywardly DIY in its approach.

Gold Panda splices up old school crackling samples and adds beats in much the same way that hip hop artists do. Yet his sound is much more reminiscent of warped techno wizard Aphex Twin - agitated dance music that people don’t really dance to. Gold Panda takes a fragment of an idea and mashes it up to create something new. His anthem, all two minutes of it, is Quitters Raga, a bizarre cartoon mix of chopped up vocals, sitar samples, vinyl crackles and disjointed beats. It’s one of those tracks that on first listen makes you feel confused and bewildered but leaves you wanting to hear it again and again. Gold Panda has also released a six track mini album entitled Before which is available as a limited edition (three hundred copies) CD exclusively through Pure Groove. Apparently he used to work for the Pure Groove gang and turned up every day at the store with fifty new tunes. We‘re not sure if this was before or after a stint in HMV where he was allegedly fired for calling his boss a cock, but certainly creating his peculiar electronic tunes suits him far more than standing behind a record store counter. Highlight on the mini album is the electric shock haphazard Wan-San Western, with its lo-fi drum and bass sound high fiving Richard D James and his Girl/Boy song at playtime. It’s definitely not, as another of his tracks is named, a bad day loop.

Gold Panda has also been responsible for a number of remixes after being picked up through Myspace by Wichita and asked to remix Bloc Party. Subsequently he’s made a buck or two by giving Little Boots, Telepathe, Simian Mobile Disco and Your Twenties his treatment. Once you’ve heard his own material, some of his remixes are so evidently his you wonder what he has left of the original. You can find Gold Panda twiddling knobs and staring at a laptop throughout October on tour with Simian Mobile Disco, with a further special release due before the end of the year. We'll be looking for more precious metal transmissions from this bear.

DiScover Tour 2009 @ Brighton Freebutt

If 2009 has been the year that mainstream British pop music forgot about guitars, then on the evidence of this inaugural Drowned In Sound sponsored DiScover tour then the same can be at least partly said for the underground. Four very different bands play, but the common thread is the use of keyboards and electronica throughout.

Nullifier make a big noise, and its hardly surprising with a stage rammed full of two keyboard / electro men, two drummers, two guitarists, a bassist and a bare footed bespectacled vocalist. Their sound is often shouty and full on with quarrelsome keyboards and gruff guitars slapping each other hard round the face until they bleed in a battle for supremacy. Neither one gives in, but underneath the brutality we can hear a pop sensibility and some catchy hooks with neat tunes. It says something about a band whose vocalist loses his glasses to the floor halfway through the set, then just tosses them back to the ground again when an audience member hands them back.

Esben And The Witch (pictured) create a very different type of atmosphere. With skulls, lanterns and flower lights on stage the band evoke a ghostly hushed midnight chill. The band have improved technically since we first caught them at the end of last year, their sound now poised, dramatic and meshed with dark sonic innovation. With a drum at stage-front, similar to Florence And The Machine, the band maximise its use adding throbbing electronic beats, taught guitars, sinister synths and strong female vocals to create a haunting experimental sound that darkly enchants, particularly on the bass heavy Marching Song which sounds better live than on their EP. The trio end their set crowded round the drum, as if trying to cast some sort of spell from it, but their magic has already been evoked.

Rave hoodied up like a boxer about to enter the ring to dual with his laptop, Gold Panda seems strangely misplaced in the venues dark dingy space. His knob twiddling, sample firing, stuttering laptop trickery is surely better suited to an urban club vibe or an art school studio than the stinking drudgery of the Freebutt. Lit only by a single red light his crackly beats are both as geeky and as hip as where your thigh meets your stomach. Gold Panda is like a malfunctioning modern Aphex Twin, warped, wired up and skilfully good.

Three Trapped Tigers are the last band on and don’t quite make it to the end of their set due to the strict curfew. They have instrumental tracks that are named only by numbers. One of their trio bounces on the spot between tracks and head bangs during them. They deliver all over the place electronic jazz rock synth that refuses to stay in one place. There are acid rave basslines, prog keyboards, space invader arcade sounds and manic drumming that refuses to do anything as simple as a standard repetitive beat. Depending on your perspective its all either a little bit to clever and up its own backside or incredibly playful and challenging music that deserves to be given your full attention. We can salute the creative and intelligent musicianship, which manages to be both structured and chaotic, organic and mechanical all at the same time, but for us Three Trapped Tigers don’t grab our emotional core.

What this evening has proved is that the underground is in good health, with strong diversity and fresh sounds, all using electronica in exciting and often engrossing ways. Now, who fancies a listen to The Kooks then ? Er... thought not.