Gold Panda - Companion (2011)

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Artist: Gold Panda
Title Of Album: Companion
Label: Ghostly International
Catalogue Number: GI-136
Release Date: 22-03-2011
Genre: Electronic / Downtempo / IDM
Format: Mp3 / FLAC (tracks)
Quality: CBR 320 kbps / Lossless
Total Time: 46:47
Total Size: 112 mb / 336 mb

Tracklist:

01 Quitters Raga 1:57
02 Fifth Ave 5:31
03 Like Totally 2:49
04 Back Home 4:31
05 Mayuri 5:09
06 Long Vacation 4:10
07 Lonely Owl 4:17
08 I Suppose I Should Say Thanks Or Some Shit 3:54
09 Heaps 2:52
10 Bad Day Bad Loop 1:24
11 Triangle Cloud 3:16
12 Win san Western 3:07
13 Police 3:43

Release Note:

Gold Panda's "Companion" comes in quick succession following the February 28th release of the "Marriage EP," which featured remixes by Star Slinger, Baths, Forest Swords and Halls.  "Companion" exists in the same sonic continuum as "Marriage," but with odd twists here and there to keep things unexpected.

In "Quitters Raga," for instance, Gold Panda incorporates Indian Raga music into jittery and percussive electronics.  There are echoes of Four Tet here hidden in the details, but whereas some of Four Tet's songs tempt boredom, Gold Panda does not (yet).

"5th Avenue" slows the tempo as Gold Panda dusts the recording with tape static, giving the digital electronic instrumentation some aged, found-sound quality.  At 3:16, he unleashes gentle waves of static, which surround the beat until melodies return slowly, as if they were being pulled back from the abyss, folded backward from erasure.

Gold Panda, as a true child of the 80′s, titles his next track "Like Totally," which contains a beautiful drone and two-note arpeggio, which are then joined mid-way through by synth tones, abstract sounds, disembodied voices and found-sound from either a movie or recording.

And if things are mellow for a track or two, one must up the beat count, which Gold Panda does with "Back Home."  It is here where Gold Panda demonstrates his ability to let things develop temporally: the song is almost crushed under the weight of its own repetition, until he fills in the spaces with more and more sounds, not to create a cacophony or crescendo, but to only partially fill voids, creating micro-voids in the sonic field.

"Mayuri" is an album highlight from the character of the beats straight on to the shades of melody deployed.  The first 50 seconds or so is filled with melodic and percussive sublimity in a shoegaze style, before shifting into something vaguely Japanese.  Gold Panda then drops some heavy bass and repetitive synth patches, until disintegrating the beat at 2:08, only to build it back up as if the constituent melodic notes are cloned and aurally out-of-focus.

Some tracks are mere curiosities, and that seems to be the case with "Long Vacation"—that is, until Gold Panda adds little sonic flourishes here and there, just as an engineer might build and build until there is a concept of a whole.  "Lonely Owl" is a plaintive break in the proceedings, a lullaby of sorts, with static and what sound like Eastern stringed instruments.  Gold Panda then inserts a break beat, but doesn't stray at all from the song's established atmosphere.

"I Suppose I Should Say 'Thanks' or Some Shit" is Gold Panda falling into the Four Tet trap of masturbatory sampling and collage, and yet, somehow, it's endearing.  One could argue that Gold Panda has now lost his focus, though, which continues on the perfectly forgettable song "Heaps."  The ennue continues on "Bad Day Bad Loop."  Bad song.  Okay, it's not a bad song, but it's not great either.  It's fair to middling, to borrow the phrase from Samuel Beckett.  The same goes for "Triangle Cloud," which—while pleasant enough—exists in the in-between world linking Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada, but without the genius of either artists.

Then, as if he knew we would come to such conclusions, Gold Panda pulls out his inner Richard D. James on "Win-San Western," with skittery, chaotic (but mathematically-controlled) beats underneath Western film instrumentation, which is then lost in an ambient haze.  Truly, one never would have thought that Warped musical tropes could go so well with Ennio Morricone's Spaghetti Western work. Gold Panda bookends his album with "Police," which is frenetic in the way of Japanese arcades, and really no way to end the album.

One begins to assume a sort of strange logic to "Companion."  That Gold Panda has an affinity for Japan and that he delights in pulling songs out of clouds of static—pulling them out of a hat like a magician.


Download link:

320
http://turbobit.net/16yqecybd941.html
http://www.unibytes.com/vtRoFg.kPb8B
http://bitshare.com/?d=278d4erk

Lossless
http://letitbit.net/download/19926.169fa3123efcea21941d69f2c0aa/Gold_Panda_-_Companion_-_2011_FLAC.rar.html
http://turbobit.net/0rlivzloy84n.html
http://www.unibytes.com/.keM3R6DQIwB
http://www.filesonic.com/folder/2440581