Skip to content
Reviews

Gold Panda, ‘Lucky Shiner’ (Ghostly International)

Too upbeat for elevators but too mild-mannered for clubs, Brit producer Derwin Panda’s laptop compositions recall a distinctly different era–say, seven years back, when Postal Service blew minds and Prefuse 73 hadn’t yet jettisoned the “pop” from “glitch pop.” Panda’s debut full-length expertly rolls globe-trotting, melodic squiggles over briskly clanging rhythms, cutting and pasting while keeping his work area immaculate. But at its best, like on the caffeinated yet coolheaded “Before We Talked,” Lucky Shiner delves deeper into emotions that aren’t so neatly sorted.