Live Review: Panda Bear, Rings Around Saturn

While appropriate visuals of actual Rings Around Saturn morph into different configurations on the screens, an interplanetary soundscape takes shape. Melbourne artist Rory McPike busily tweaks sounds from behind the stage left console. It’s ambient and meditative, time seems suspended and his short set flies by.

We're warned about the use of strobes in tonight's performance thanks to signs positioned near the venue doors. Panda Bear (whose human moniker is Noah Lennox, co-founding member of Animal Collective) wanders over to his console, greets us and thanks us for coming. This is Panda Bear's first Australian tour, 19 years since the project's debut self-titled album was released. Lennox's longtime video collaborator Danny Perez is the mastermind behind these swirling visuals, which are an essential part of Panda Bear's live shows. 

During the opener, a woman transformed into an alien - thanks to scaly, full-body make-up and creepy contact lenses - writhes around and stares menacingly down the lens. Elsewhere, visuals feature amorphous, overlapping forms including lollies, various body parts, fruit and morph-suited people. Throughout the course of the evening, we also meet characters plucked directly from tonight’s nightmares thanks to this footage (think: Aphex Twin's Come To Daddy video level of scary). Some super-high-pitched frequencies that would be too much for dogs' ears (even we wince) and Lennox's poor diction is alienating. Sure, Lennox's yearning vocals are entrancing - even when warped and manipulated - but as impressive as Perez's visuals are, our minds constantly wander and at one point we mentally ponder which snacks we'll purchase on the way home. 

There's a lone raver up in one of the side balconies, busting loose and filming heaps of footage on his iPhone, but many audience members leave throughout the show for toilet/gasper breaks: it does feel weird experiencing Panda Bear in a seated theatre. Standout track Last Night At The Jetty deals some beautifully wistful melodies, even though these sound like they're being cranked through a hurdy-gurdy. The main set closer contains distorted sirens and the accompanying visuals evoke a bad acid trip.


Audience members make just enough noise to coax Lennox back out for an encore, which we think starts with his latest single Dolphin, from Panda Bear's upcoming sixth album Buoys (due for February release). There are crystal clear, water droplet samples that couldn't sound more realistic. Tonight's setlist contains many new tracks from this upcoming set, which means many fans are hearing this material for the first time. Then sonically, everything spirals out of control (on purpose, we're sure), making us feel like we’ve landed in a scene from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory where one of the children is being punished for breaking Wonka’s rules. What just happened?