Caribou & Gold Panda, Manchester Deaf Institute
Live ReviewsAll that is great and good about new music at the minute.
19th April 2010, Manchester Deaf Institute / By Matthew Britton
Sometime it’s a single event that can kill a dream. Other times, you get the pleasure of watching your ideal slowly fade out of view. Oddly, the two sometimes combine meaning that not making your school’s first team, being the last picked at playtime and having asthma can be snapped into focus by the sudden realisation that half of the England national team are younger than you. Music may be a place for dreamers, but most of the crowd at Deaf Institute last Monday not only saw one of the tightest, most mesmerising performances that Manchester is likely to play host to this year, but also left with their thin hopes of sonic stardom firmly in tatters.In fact, the support act was enough to do that. Gold Panda exemplifies all that is great and good about new music at the minute. Whilst there’s obviously some influence been taken from the likes of Four Tet, there’s so much more to his work. Alone on a stage with a Macbook as his only friend, he still manages to be utterly compelling, using his unique blend of samples and warm, euphoric beats, it’s not hard to see why he was picked by the tastemakers of BBC’s Sounds of 2010 list. Just in case the crowd haven’t realised who he is, the cap worn throughout the first few tracks is changed for one that looks like a Panda, before continuing to get the swelling crowd moving to his signature sound.
As the final few punters shuffled in to ensure that there was absolutely no room to move for anybody, Dan Snaith and friends took to the stage. It’s rare that you’re in the presence of a genius, but throughout an hour long set, Caribou consistently proved why they’re so highly rated by critics around the world. Though strictly a solo moniker, there’s no way that one man alone would be able to replicate the swirling mass of noise committed to record. To the backdrop of a series of short, psychedelic films made for each song, the band piled on the layers of painstakingly crafted genius, making it all seem effortless in the process.
The use of a dual drum kits is usually the indicator of experimental music, but Caribou have always been far beyond that. 2007’s Andorra won Snaith the 2008 Polaris Prize and many new followers in the process, and it’s those tracks that receive the wildest bouts of appreciation from the crowd, but those from the follow up, Swim, got them moving and felt far from out of place. The fact is that, for all the end of year lists that the records constantly make, it’s still certainly the case that here is one of the great undiscovered gems of the new millennium. The music invites you to get lost within it and it’d take a month to unpick and decipher what the band throw together in a minute. The level of complexity means that at times it’s best to admire than deconstruct. However you’d describe it – electronica, dance, dream pop or anything else, the fact is that a Caribou gig is a mountainous achievement, one that the likes of us will probably never scale.
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