the pandas: [reviews]

Thank God for The Pandas. This Worcester, MA-based instrumental band
is probably the best dreamy psychedelic outfit I've heard since Puerto
Rico's Balun. The brainy quartet's sophomore release Solutions weaves
its way through the course of 8 songs to craft buoyant, airy
instrumentals that are stocked with a cornucopia of instruments and
ambient sequencing.

Everything from a guitar synth to acoustic drums, a sequencer to the
accordion, a glockenspiel, a melodica, all of it is used here, and
used quite effectively. Though at eight songs and a running time of 40
minutes, the disc does drag in spots, the entire tone is engaging and
wholesome and warrants the band a heavy dose of positive press.

As for the sonic textures, this album is certainly soundtrack music
that most closely resembles a Michel Gondy or Spike Jonze film.
Equally quirky and daring, The Pandas meticulously carve out
grandiose, bristling tunes such as the ebullient opener "Apertura,"
the resounding title track and the inspiring "Allele Frequency." Its
one big aural spiral that whirls, spins and bends its way through the
psyche and into the marrow

One of the band's best songs is the third track, "Tanela," which
tops off at 4 minutes and 20 seconds. The brevity of this song is what
makes it so memorable. Too many instrumental bands manage to write
songs that stretch on past the six or seven minute mark and end up
heavy-handed, leaving the listener weary. Sadly, The Pandas fall
victim to this as well, but not nearly as much as other instrumental
bands. For all it shortcomings its an impacting, hallucinatory,
triumphant and resounding disc that's nothing short of brilliant.

Recommended If You Like: Balun's Something Comes This Way, Michel
Gondry films, staring off into space and His Name is Alive.


Greg Robson
Staff Writer
Star Community Publishing
25 Deshon Road
Melville, NY 11747

the pandas - solutions

More electronic than Explosions in the Sky, less electronic than Boards of Canada; more uplifting than Mogwai, less happy than Ilkae; the thing about the Pandas is that they just understand how to make good dreamy hybrid music. They have this intrinsic ability to perfectly pair old shoegaze sounds with modern IDM and pour a ton of sentiment into both. The emotion is in the details: nostalgia chords shimmering in waves of clear but reverby guitar, eventually washing over a crunchy computer-engineered beat; a glockenspiel chiming in unison with a lazy-sad guitar line an octave below, both loping with a looping beat. If other people's attempt to mix rock and electronic use a blowtorch to fuse the two together, then the Pandas hand-stitch their patterns, and and the color of thread is carefully considered. The entire album is alive with creative thought. Sprawl yourself out somewhere and let it melt you.

(Rogue Tape Records, CD)

Post-rock — or whatever we're supposed to call that dreamily expansive and mostly instrumental genre these days — has lost a good deal of its novelty. Earlier in the decade, it seemed like every musician with a delay pedal and a Tortoise record was taking a stab at the sound. This eventually resulted in a plethora of musically aimless bands with super-artsy album covers. And suddenly it just wasn't cool anymore.

Now that the hipsters have moved on to other concerns, namely hyphy hip-hop and Talking Heads ripoffs, fine bands such as Worcester, Massachusetts-based quartet The Pandas have some room to breathe.

The group's latest disc, Solutions, is a shimmering sonic marvel, stacked with gracious arrangements of remarkable depth. Stylistically, the album sticks pretty close to the post-rock playbook, but as far as vocal-free space jams go, the shit is tight.

It's tempting to lump The Pandas in with Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky, two of the more durable bands in instrumental rock. But the sounds found here are less dark than the aforementioned acts, and they largely avoid the crescendo-crammed architecture so common to this strain of music.

The Pandas excel at balancing crispy, IDM-inspired rhythms with jazz-flecked chords and glacial ambience. Occasionally this leads to repetition, but it also makes a fine soundtrack to a winter's daydream.

Opener "Apertura" features sparse guitar arpeggios and delicate glockenspiel, which share the same patient motif. A glitchy, Bjork-esque beat is introduced partway in; organic drums eventually supplant the electro rhythms.

A chilly distance is kept on "People," a polite-sounding number bedecked with keyboards and an indistinguishable vocal sample. The song doesn't exactly build into much, but the quiescence it conveys is pleasant enough.

The title track is supremely mellow, with wisps of guitar that evoke the feeling of watching clouds from a moving vehicle. The song makes great use of the theremin — the odd electronic instrument used in the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations," as well as countless '50s sci-fi flicks. Here, it sounds sweetly cinematic, like a road movie captured in unfolding, idyllic tones.

"Song About Songs" opens with gentle guitar swells, before being joined by a persistent drumbeat and protracted trumpet lines. The song possesses a great sense of clarity and motion, and it segues nicely into "Point of Beginning," which plays like a spaghetti Western on the moon.

Whenever I hear an album as detailed as Solutions, I find myself wondering how the band pulls it off live. Guess I'll have to check out The Pandas at Club Metronome on Friday, March 16, with The Hero Cycle, The Shapes and Kiss Me Deadly.

CASEY REA

Worcester, Massachusetts is home to some of the best experimental music out there, and it's all because four musicians collectively known as the Pandas happen to reside there. I've been enjoying the Panda's second album, Solutions, for awhile now and have come to the conclusion that it is one of the most intelligent and subtly provocative mix of songs that I've heard in years. It's engaging without getting 'in your face' and clever without a trace of pretense. In fact, with its charismatic melodies, steady rhythm and aural intensity, Solutions is downright seductive.

More than songwriting, the Pandas' approach to music might be better described as layering "raw lo-fi dissonance, melodic hooks, and mechanical loops" to create minimalist soundscapes. Much as a great photograph captures a truer essence of its subject than the naked eye ever could, the Pandas' songs distill sound to its aural essence.


Solutions reminds me of the best of psychedelic and progression rock minus any histrionics, unnecessary noodling or psycho-babble blather. The album's eight instrumental songs interact in such a way as to suggest a genuine love of sound. Loops, samples and sythesized noises blend comfortably with more organic textures such as guitar, melodica and glockenspiel. The result? Approachable music that soothes like Jobim, suggests like Morricone, plays like Esquivel, and reasons like Stereolab.

"Solutions" review by Blank Canvas

It's not that often that you get a phone call asking you to review the new CD by one of your favorite bands. It's some kind of hipster dream for most, but here I am...

I'm fighting a strong temptation to just let loose, run my mouth for pages and pages, I could too, that's how good this record is. Most of it wouldn't make sense though. I'd be delving into the images, the feelings, the tones, it'd be lyric poetry, and I'd probably embarrass myself. Anyways, enough about me, you're here for the music aren't you. Lush. I think that's the first word I'd use to describe this recording, tones and melodies drift through the sonic stratosphere, straining their tethers but are reined in by the snapping pulse of grounded, but unearthly rhythms. Drawing comparisons to such acts as Tortoise and The Album Leaf, The Pandas operate in a sphere wholly their own. Deep undersea, the cold peace of outer space, the inner regions of the mind, the cusp between crazy and crazier, these are some of the places "Solutions" explores. Your guide on these journeys, the four-tet known as The Pandas.

Recorded at the Tremolo Lounge, but conceived of over the last few years, between Worcester, Mass and Monterrey, Mexico, "Solutions" by the Pandas, is an album that tempts me to much hyperbole. Grandstanding and fanboy salivations aside, there are some albums that people should listen to, not just hear once or twice, but really get into, sit down and just listen, drive nowhere in the car just to hear the whole thing over again. I must admit, I've had an early copy of this album for a couple of months now, and I was just as excited to receive the finished product last night, as I was to receive the early copy from the hands of Luis Fraire the drummer before a gig at Java Hut in August. [I book bands, I've been collecting records and going to shows since I was 14 or so. I hear a lot of music, I hear so much music, at times I feel lost in it all. When I got this cd I played it like I played records "back in the day", on repeat, on random, twice every afternoon for weeks, even while on vacation.]

It's tempting to say too much about the music of the Pandas. The music they make is approachable on many different levels. Chromatic chord structures, rhythms shifting from loose and languid to tight and tense in a moment, but always with metronomic precision. The music flows, but contains narrative, that's where it's easiest to get lost in speaking about their latest release "Solutions". The jazzy interplay between synth and guitar, weaves songs that paint pictures, the kind you get when you lay on your back on the floor of your basement and turn the volume all the way up, or at 5 am cruising 290 back home, watching Worcester wake up, and streetlights are being drowned out by the sunlight. The pulse of the bass, and the mix of live and manufactured beats bring a clean and at times almost ethereal feel to the music....

Maybe I'm just jaded, but, working in a music venue, I see many live performances every week, and am rarely excited. The Pandas are an exception. Seeing the Pandas play live is always an experience. Whether it's upstairs at Ralph's Diner, or on stage at my own cafe, the Java Hut. The lights go down way low, the audience is usually rapt, attentive and expectant, their heads nodding to the rhythm, the four musicians sit in the shadows beneath a projector screen showing off a surreal triptych of the strange and fantastic sonic backdrop, the room is enveloped in a dense and warm atmosphere, both hypnotic and engaging. That is a Pandas live show.

Sean Carroll (guitar/guitar synth) and Luis Fraire (drums/loops) have been playing together for 10 years, as have bandmates Brian Goodhue (keyboards/sampler) and William "Brown" Koroskenyi (bass/glockenspiel/melodica). This dynamic shows in the tightness of the band's playing both live and in the studio. The group displays a deftness in keeping the cinematic scope of their sound under tight wraps. The interplay between the diverse elements are both elegant, and universal. Any listener can approach this album with assurance that they will relate to it, but not in some banal, and manufactured sense, more in the sense that the music will excite, and activate their imagination in a very real, and tangible way. This is music one hears, then feels, then sees, then smells, then tastes..

the pandas - pan de monio

The more I hear this, the more I love it. So many influences, from Mille Plateaux Click-Hop to Mole-era Residents to Hacker-era Clock DVA to Livonia period His Name is Alive. Really lovin' this. And the fact that they sample James Coleman and Liz Tonne makes this exceptionally high class stuff.

the pandas - pan de monio

The key word here is texture. It’s almost like a mechanical river; incredibly precise but somehow earthy enough to invite a listener latch on, even if that listener isn’t incredibly well-versed in electronic music. Slurring through watery hums and washing over jagged rhythms, this release from Worcester, Massachusetts pools in the shadows of a gorgeous synth canopy before rushing through narrow clay channels and off of a high cliff. Fans of Mum’s brand of musical whimsy will certainly find a home here, but the Pandas offer a few more teeth to contrast the flurry of sweet high-endedness. Sure, listen to it on your big speakers, but give it a whirl with your headphones before deciding you’ve heard every piece of it.