BrilliantlyDifferent + Gold Panda + Wichita Recordings

Approached by Wichita Management to work with Gold Panda in January 2009, we began by building a dotcom under iamgoldpanda.com focusing on graphic art, music streams, adding a blog and twitter account.

During the same period, Gold Panda had been remixing a whole host of artists - providing a key opportunity to develop his profile online and to excite tastemakers and early adopters. We were soon talking to key bloggers about is remixes for Little Boots, Zero7, Telepathe, Simian Mobile Disco, Your Twenties and Bloc Party creating an awareness and hunger for his own music which was soon to be released.

Working on a premise of less is more we gained key support from Pinglewood, Fader, Pitchfork and Drowned In Sound - all committing to insightful and wildly humouring interviews and launched Gold Pandas solo releases via Make Mine and Various Productions. We also gained a key supporter in Rob Da Bank at Radio1 who discribes him as "leftfield electronic wizardry is my specialist subject. Gold Panda is the new grand emperor of the genre and i cant get enough of those reversed drum fills, strange beautiful melodies and Squarepusher meets Shadow scary warmth"

 

Video: 'Back Home'

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Hailing from Chelmsford in Essex, but a resident of East London for some time now, Gold Panda started writing beats and collaborating a few years ago, working with the likes of Infinite Livez and Shuttle (both Ninja Tune) as well as creating his own material.

Having spent downtime behind the counters of various establishments of ill repute – finding out that record stores and adult stores are no less seedier than each other, he consolidated the rest of his hours creating archives of electronic music; each track different from the other, incorporating multitudes of styles and disparate influences and obscure samples and base material. Having sated the need to create these volumes of material, he poked his head into the world by way of a collection of instantaneously raved-about remixes, that quickly found the interested of various labels, blogs and taste makers, leading to requests for him to re-edit the likes of Little Boots, Telepathe, Bloc Party, Simian Mobile Disco and even lounge-tronica act Zero 7.

In the meantime, Gold Panda began culling his back-archive of material for a series of low key releases: this one, on Make Mine is the second such, following on from a 12” on Various to be released to the world in June this year. Now having essentially cleared the decks (bar the 100+ tracks that may one day creep into the open as he sees fit), 2009 will see Gold Panda pushing on and consolidating his quickly burgeoning reputation as one of the brightest names in the electronic scene.

What does it sound like? One writer claimed that: “He intuitively mixes lop sided, chopped up hip hop style beats with a gorgeous refined melodic techno sensibility creating a fresh cross genre sound that’s distinct and accomplished.” Which sounds pretty good, so let’s go with that.

The music on this 7” is influenced by a year spent living in Japan, as well as B movies on vhs video, minimal techno and hip hop, and all these influences bleed into his sound. An avowed lover of Japanese culture and it’s lifestyle, Gold Panda spend two years at the renowned School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS) learning to read and write Japanese. He plans to return to Japan later this year to continue writing more material, as well as playing out his material as he takes his live show far afield from the flat in Hoxditch where it was created. With new material, live shows and ultimately a defining long-player to come, the next 12 months should be hugely fruitful in the immersive world of Gold Panda.

Myspace // Twitter // Dotcom