Panda Bear & Sonic Boom Announce ‘Reset’ Collab LP / Share “Go On” Video

Too often when a notable music partnership ends, one individual goes on to solidify their name as an icon in the industry, while the others disappear into oblivion, referenced only in pop-culture trivia or Behind The Music-style docutainment paying tribute to their former collaborator. The dissolution of the pioneering British neo-psych space rock outfit, Spacemen 3 took a much different turn with both of its primary members continuing to thrive in the industry more than 3 decades after parting ways. As Jason “J Spaceman” Pierce continued to carve his place in history with the highly revered project, Spiritualized — their 9th studio album, Everything Was Beautiful, dropped earlier this year — his old SP3 cohort, Peter “Sonic Boom” Kember has found considerable success with his own ventures, both as an artist, as well as behind the boards. Along with tremendous output through projects Sonic Boom, Spectrum, and E.A.R. (Experimental Audio Research), Kember has explored collaborations with contemporaries like Stereolab and Dean & Britta, as well as joining forces with his own personal influences like Delia Derbyshire and Silver Apples. What’s really been interesting about his trajectory over the last decade or so is that Sonic Boom has made connections with a newer generation of artists, performing with and/or producing for acts like Beach House, MGMT, Moon Duo, and Iceage. Out of all of these collaborations, however, none has proven more fruitful than his partnership with Animal Collective‘s Noah Lennox.

Better known by his stage name, Panda Bear, Lennox also found his initial success in a band that operates as a true partnership requiring him to share the limelight. The rare and tremendous thing about AnCo is that Lennox and his bandmates have managed to continue their prolific run as a unit over the last 2 decades, while each of the 4 members manages to balance that production with individual solo ventures. The liner notes in Panda Bear‘s densely layered, sample-heavy breakthrough effort, Person Pitch, included an eclectic list of musical influences in the “Thank You” section, which featured “SPACEMEN 3” sandwiched between “WU-TANG CLAN” and “CYNDI LAUPER.” This was 2007 and it prompted Kember to reach out to Lennox via MySpace to express his appreciation for the mention. When it came time for the Baltimore native to release his next solo album, Tomboy, in 2011, Lennox brought on Sonic Boom to engineer, mix, master, and even perform live with him to support it. Sonic Boom has continued to work in various capacities on multiple Panda Bear releases ever since, with their collaboration reaching a new level on 2015‘s Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper, which he mixed and saw the pair sharing both production and art direction duties. Now, 15 years after their initial contact, the duo are announcing their first real, full-on official collaboration album due out later this year.

Titled Reset, the new LP is slated for an August 12th digital release date, with physical media following on November 18th. 6 years ago, Kember relocated to Portugal, a country that Lennox has been living in since leaving Brooklyn in 2004. After hauling his vinyl collection all the way from England, he began listening to old records from artists like Eddie Cochrane and The Everly Brothers, which he hadn’t heard in years. In doing so, he noticed how so many of the “ornate intros” of these songs seemed largely disparate from the tunes that they set the foundation for. This prompted Sonic Boom to begin “crafting song-length loops from these preambles, twisting and bending the parts like scrap metal into chimeras.” He then shared them with Panda Bear who had an innate understanding of how to finish them off.

We are existing in a time period where it feels as if almost every art project that I read about is related to, or in response to, the pandemic and isolation. Reset is no different, forming its shape amidst the beginning of international lockdowns.

Along with the announcement, we receive our first taste of the new collaboration in the form of a music video for the song “Go On,” which features a sample of the 1967 Troggs tune “Give It to Me.” Directed by James Siewert, the visuals mirror the bright, metallic reverberance of the persistent, phase-heavy beat and the vibrant melody that weaves through it with a final product that offers the experience of watching the Sesame Street pinball number count set in Willy Wonka‘s chocolate factory and filtered through Lawnmower Man.  Check it out below.

Reset is available to pre-order now. A limited edition yellow vinyl is currently available directly through the Domino Records website with $1 from each purchase going to support Earthisland.org., a non-profit focused on the conservation, preservation, and restoration of the environment. There is also a Bandcamp exclusive pink vinyl variant that is limited to only 600 copies. It’s $10 more than the standard black pressing, which is also available, but that extra $10 goes directly to M.A.P.S. (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies). Another incredible non-profit organization that we enthusiastically support, M.A.P.S. is dedicated to the research, development, and integration of psychedelic therapies into medical treatments to achieve mass help.