Two of British electronic music’s most exciting new proponents talk to Matt Grimble aboard the Thekla

With as much discerning them as unifying them, Gold Panda's mesmeric, sample-based performances are a spectral chasm away from Three Trapped Tigers' hyper-virtuosic, brash takes on precipitous electronica, but there's a warm sense of fondness between the two entities who are united in their failure to correspond to what have become the predictable norms of the artform.

Unlike the UK's more esoteric electronic artists, Derwin Panda is a thoroughly affable chap, and atop Old Profanity's bow he gladly discusses skinny-dipping and life in Japan over a steaming cuppa. Being fairly new to the stage, he's clearly still finding his (sea)legs.

“I find it really uncomfortable actually, getting up on stage and performing, and I don't really know what to do because it's essentially bedroom electronica. If you just take your laptop on stage, people are like 'huh, he's just checking his emails!'”

However, his live performance is far from disengaged. Crouched over a spaghettied network of samplers, delay pedals and effects units, he proceeds to deliver an hypnotic performance, building each track from a barrage of pad strokes, the promise of his trademark drum-thump ever-looming, elevating the boat skywards each time the songs find their equilibrium, soon to be ripped apart into a cloud of delays.

At the heart of the technical composition process, Derwin assumes a synaesthetic, borderline-spiritual approach to his creations.

“I quite like photos with no-one in, where it's just a building or an empty scene. I guess that's how I like to think of my music – as a picture maybe, or a colour. I don't really make tracks that are black, which I'd love to make, but they always come out a bit happy. I think for the new stuff I'd really like to get a juxtaposition of melancholy darkness, with these little bits of hope, which get taken away again - a bit like life, really..."

His observations appear despondent on paper, but they are delivered in a cheery manner, and he is clearly at ease with his domestic climate.

“Being brought up in England, I'm cool with the grey skies and the rain and the wind, and I enjoy that more for some reason than the sun; my tracks are usually made in the rain. There's something inside that I feel when it's grey and overcast. I usually have a lot of ideas and, as autumn comes, things start to come together.”

In spite of the bleak setting for the conception of his tracks, they all possess a quasi tropical cheer that exudes positivity, setting him apart sonically and socially from his peers, particularly the unrelentingly harsh sounds cultivated around Bristol.

“I don't really know any dubstep guys, and I don't know if we'd necessarily get on - It's quite closed really. I don't mind being on the outside of it. I've never fitted into anything really so I'd be quite happy just to be an outsider; a loner, doing whatever I do.”

And whatever it is he does seems to have been working out. Appearing as if from nowhere, he has been commissioned to remix tracks by Bloc Party, Telepathé and Little Boots on the strength of a few tracks posted on his MySpace profile. His recent EPs 'Miyamae' (named after a province in Japan he stayed with a friend “because it sounds like a shit version of Miami”) and 'Quitter's Raga', both released on the revered Various Production label, have garnered him lavish praise on Pitchfork and a spot on this Drowned-In-Sound-curated DIScover tour. Unsurprisingly, he's still self-deprecating about his early success.

“Blogs have been great. Everyone's been great, really - I haven't really had any bad press... I've had people hating it, but if I made music for everyone, it'd be shit. Or shitter.”

Later that night, Mr Panda's tabletop array of LCDs is swiftly replaced by a landscape of keys and knobs and Andy Betts' unmistakably analogue drums. The sheer amount of kit on stage is explained succinctly by unassuming synth-pianist and melodic prime-mover Tom:

“One of the absolute founding credos of this band is no backing tracks.”

Their line-up is completed by Matt, who alternates between a comparatively modest synthesizer stack and his ultra-effected guitar, which he plays with understated military precision.

Decked out in cargo shorts, jeans and cheap t-shirts, this is clearly not a band concerned with mirroring its ultra-hip Brooklyn (“and Norwegian”) sonic neighbours. When asked if they see themselves as belonging to a scene, Tom is quick to respond.

“We're not growing out of a scene because none of us are scenesters. We're all just geeky musicians who have actually spent a lot of time working on music, rather than worrying about the competition, as it were. Like you say, we've kinda come out of nowhere – I think that's absolutely correct. We all have a background in a myriad of different genres and styles.”

They also display a writing process which belies the coherence in their songs so inevident in many of the disposable math rock bands of their cohort.

“I think a lot of music in this genre is jammed with a tendency towards long-windedness, and I think that's an inherent problem with jamming. Normally, I have an idea, then I'll bring it to these guys who basically rip it apart and input a whole lot of their own stuff. Sometimes Matt or Betts will program drum beats for Betts to learn, so that he's not tied to what his limbs want him to do.

"It's weird, journalists seem to have a really high opinion of the British experimental scene, and I've seen a lot of bands who are prepared to think outside the box, and are really pushing it, but I haven't seen that many who are really nailing it, to be honest. So I'd like to know these bands who everyone is associating themselves with – I'd like to know who they're talking about and why they think they're good.”

Their travelling companion has clearly had no problems winning them over, however.

“I didn't really know about him before this tour,” Matt says of Mr. Panda, “and he's only really just emerged this summer, but we've got on really well with him; he's a really safe guy and I really like his music.”

Andy agrees: “He gets a really nice organic feel from his electronics. He just plays a couple of samplers, or whatever, but puts a great real-time spin on it."

“I'd only heard the one song before we came on tour, and I was wondering if he'd be really banging.” adds Tom “I thought it would be really funny to see how we'd cope going on after that, but actually it's just properly chilled-out electronica, which is my preferred type of that music. So it's worked out really well.”

As with every remotely challenging outfit, the music press has been clamouring to pigeonhole their sound. Andy points out that this is inescapably territorial.

“When I say I'm in an instrumental band that's slightly experimental, people go 'oh, that must sound like Battles!'”

“I don't think this band sounds anything like Battles” adds Tom “I think we're closer to U2 than Battles. That's so obviously the one-liner that's gonna get quoted!”

“It's easy to get misquoted.” Matt recounts “We recently did an hour long interview, chatted about everything, and the headline that came up was a joke that we'd said: “experimental jazz musicians playing rock to get laid...”

With two entities delivering such different brands of electronica, the DiScover tour could easily have come off as jarring and incoherent, were the featured artists less grounded in their musical vision and more inclined to posturing. Luckily for the under capacity crowd, tonight's line-up was one of uncontrived musical passion and sonic revelation.

Matt Grimble

Photography by Annie Lange - http://riskandconsequence.blogspot.com