Panda Bear: “It’s easier if everything is binary...but the truth is not”
Watch an interview with the Animal Collective co-founder and relive his set in the Opera House Studio.
When Panda Bear releases a new album he cracks open a new sonic world—the late afternoon summer collage of 2007’s Person Pitch, the surfer jams on Tomboy, to the liquid Buoys released this year. As co-founder and main writer of experimental trio Animal Collective, he created the voice and the sonic palette of their seminal albums, including Merriweather Post Pavilion. As a soloist, Noah Lennox has been releasing his own experiments since 1999, with each album its own exploration of the limits of sound with a refreshing curiosity.
Ben Marshall, the Sydney Opera House’s Head of Contemporary Music, talked to Lennox before the show about the opposing forces in his music: confusion against rhythm, seduction against challenge, and on DJing and performance.
Panda Bear Buoys is out now via EMI Music Australia.
I don't feel like my way is to be really explicitly preachy about it, I'd rather fool you into feeling something, or seduce you.
I like when there's some kind of confusion to it. I know it asks something of the listener a lot of the time, which can make it tough.
I know it's easier if everything is binary and it's all black and white, but I think the truth is not. I feel good if my work somehow reflects that.
