Album Review: Gold Panda - Half Of Where You Live

Gold Panda's 2010 debut record, Lucky Shiner, was a brilliant, if patchy, glitch-driven work of unbridled excess. For every few sublime moments, there was a hint of indulgence and the odd track that just missed the mark. His second proper full-length, Half Of Where You Live, more than makes up for these missteps.

Opening tune, Junk City II, does what every great opening tune should in that it sums up the album's sonic ideas succinctly and effortlessly. Sampled beats, flourishes of lush instrumentation and playful static intrusions create a lush soundscape that Gold Panda is able to bend and change slightly as the tune moves on. Things only get groovier from there, with vocal sample-driven and danceable An English House and Brazil showing that the producer knows when to hold back on the experimentation and let grooves run their course.

Album highlight, My Father In Hong Kong 1961, could pass for an experimental Boards Of Canada track, with its ambient wall of sound underplaying the joyful, oriental vibe that flows forward from sampled wind chimes. What is miraculous is that these distant-sounding songs are held together cohesively.

Overall, this is a decidedly more danceable record than Lucky Shiner. Not that …Shiner didn't have its own groove, but Half Of Where You Live channels this to the fore. Pulsing beats and more manageable glitch elements create a unified sense of form here, the result being a very cohesive and rewarding album. The peaks aren't quite as high as they were on his first record, but the overall result is a mature, sophisticated piece of beat-heavy electronica and one of 2013's more impressive electro releases.