♫♪  Panda Bear - “Boys Latin (Andy Stott Remix)”

Person Pitch is legendary; even recently, on the last warm days of 2014, I had a near-ecstatic experience putting on headphones and listening to it while walking around a park near my house. Tomboy doesn’t get as much play around my house, but it’s still pretty solid. Given Panda Bear’s positive relationship with my ears and deep importance to my Person Pitch-era self, one would think that I’d have at least given his newest, PBVSGR, a listen. But, in part due to all those YouTube ads telling me to listen to it, I’ve deliberately avoided the album since.

So when I first heard Andy Stott’s remix, released recently on SoundCloud, I thought “Whoa, Panda Bear’s new stuff is way harsher than it used to be,” as I’d mistakenly assumed that the remix more or less resembled the source material. This is decidedly not the case here, and Panda Bear superfans might be a bit disappointed at just how little the remix resembles “Boys Latin.” The only thing linking it to Panda Bear in any recognizable way is a short snippet of PB vocals just after the two-minute mark, which could have just as easily been left out, after which Stott jumps promptly back into the complex trap-industrial beat that makes up the bulk of the track’s six minutes.

Those looking for elaborations on the intricate melodies for which Panda Bear is renowned will find their mellows unceremoniously harshed within the opening seconds of this remix. The track is completely beat-driven, melody of any sort conspicuously AWOL. Luckily, that beat is more than capable of keeping our attention throughout the track, always moving just a bit too quickly to ever be pinned down, leaving more tracers than concrete images. Blown-out bass and trashcan-lid percussion stand in for the agreeable samples AnCo fans might expect, rattles and hisses that at times resemble spray paint cans writing “fuk brian wilson” on the wall of Noah Lennox’s house. Stott even denies the listener a kick drum, which might keep everything in orbit; you’re on your own in his Magic Theater, which ought to carry with it the same warning as the the one in Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf: FOR MADMEN ONLY.

Panda Bear is also embarking as of tomorrow on an international tour, and is probably the only artist in the world whose upcoming tour dates include both Berghain and Coachella. Scope those dates in full (and more tracks, duh) at the track’s soundcloud page.

• Panda Bear: http://www.pbvsgr.com
• Andy Stott: http://www.modern-love.co.uk/artists/andy-stott

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CHOCOLATE GRINDER is our audio/visual section, with an emphasis on the lesser heard and lesser known. We aim to dig deep, but we’ll post any song or video we find interesting, big or small.

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