In a music world full of sub-genres, electronic music seems more stacked than most areas. Trance, electro, witch house, regular house, dub-step, post-dub-step, whatever. For me, who is not an electronic connoisseur by any means, an easy dividing line is the kind that people dance to, and the kind people stare at. I’m sure both Gold Panda and Dam Mantle could be the former, but at the Troubadour on Sunday night, they were clearly the latter. Which is fine by me, as I am much better at standing still and staring than dancing.
On top of their musical complexity and emphasis on texture over simple release pleasures, the venue itself is just not a dance venue; the is balcony seating, there is a limited access upstairs bar where you can watch the show through a window, there are the most basic of lighting and fog machines to accompany the music aspect of the show. The Troubadour is a rock venue, plain and simple. But, it is a prestigious and historical rock venue and regardless of the atmosphere not being the best to suit what Gold Panda and Dam Mantle were putting out, they sold the fucker out. This is a proud moment in any musician’s career: to come to L.A. and sell-out the venue that everyone who is anyone in music has sold-out.
Opener Dam Mantle admitted after the show that he wished the music he was playing was actually available at the merch table, but it was still a couple months until release. The man (Glasgow’s Tom Marshall) was a whirlwind behind his table, spinning knobs and hitting keys and cuing loops with lightning precision and determination. And though he was fun enough to stare at, the real joy came near the end of his set, when he took the music to another level.
Grabbing the mic, he began adding vocals that were more than the distorted vocal sounds of early in his set. He actually sang. And he sang well. His crooning represented the R&B sound that is making James Blake so popular, but it was to much more intricate and over-stated (that sounds wrong. I mean that it wasn’t understated. So, I guess it was just plain stated) backing that made Dam Mantle, at least at that moment, seem like a whole new beast. He upped the ante again for his closing track, using an over-the-top synthy-overture to end his statement of a set. It was a firm-handshake of an introduction, where he looked the audience in the eyes and refused to blink.
Gold Panda, the more established of the two artists, kept the night on an equally high playing field and only seemed to slightly suffer because he booked such an impressive opener. But his set of grimy electronica got the crowd to bob around and cheer for the sheer innovation in the sounds they were hearing. The songs ranged from video game bleeps to lush piano melodies over hissy beats, never settling for easy escapes, but rather always challenging through repetition and subtle builds.
In fact, the pure pleasure in watching Gold Panda is in the moments when the music stops. No, not because you wanted the music to stop, but because by the end of your journey that you have been led on by the minutes of spazzy, exciting, and always new sounding tunes, when the room gets quiet, you realize how far you have come. It is a live experience I would liken to Flying Lotus, where you don’t exactly know what you are supposed to be doing to the music, but are captivated by it nonetheless.
Good luck dancing to it, though. And those of you who can, well, you are artists who deserve your own write-up, as well.
