This Is Our Jam: Gold Panda, “MPB”

There’s a lot going on in Gold Panda’s music: Beats stutter and shift tempo, elements evolve and warp, the journey from point A to point B is never a straight line. Yet, as complex and willfully obtuse as Gold Panda’s tracks sometimes are, there is a natural harmony among the competing fragments. “MPB,” released yesterday on Gold Panda’s website employs nearly all the elements of Gold Panda’s oeuvre to create a holistically unified success. Backed by soft, shimmering texture, the track begins with minimal plinks and Far-Eastern xylophone rolls before dropping in videogame laser zaps. Unlike other artists who use neutered snippets of sound in a way that can feel mechanized (schizoid MPC-meister Baths, for example), the disparate parts of “MPB” feel distinctly organic. A more apt comparison is to The Field, whose hypnotic looping creates a similar sense of serenity. Although this may only be a one-off for Gold Panda, “MPB” is as pleasing a track as any he has released thus far.