HEALTH/Gold Panda, London The Lexington
HEALTH by Paul Caudell
August 26th 2009
We’re ushered upstairs to Gold Panda, already on stage, wearing a rather fetching pink hooded jacket that resembles an oversized baby-gro. He’s adopting the common posture of the knob twiddling laptop gazer, hunched. His eyes scan the array of esoteric machines and boxes that lay before him. Gold Panda splices beats and loops to their least amount, creating composite songs, deconstructing sounds to their core, and then repeating the blips ad infinitum. “I’m gonna play some stuff off the laptop while I do this other shit” beautifully encapsulates the ambiguity of what Gold Panda actually does behind all those wires. Tracks go from weird noise to pleasing beats. Where any semblance of a regular pattern is omitted in a track, it’s replaced by ambient noise. This is to be the theme of the night. Filling every possible pause with sound.
It beggars belief that throughout most of Gold Panda’s set, a handful of vapid fops can’t keep their spewing cake-holes shut. If only they could muster the ability to maintain silence they might actually realise that Gold Panda is playing a blinding set. GP finishes, and LA noise doyens, HEALTH take to the stage soon after. Thankfully, they demand attention.
“Hi. I guess now seems like a good time to say something appreciative like… thanks”. It’s the only banter before they launch with all fury into their opening track, ‘Nice Girls’. It blisters the air with hammering toms. The safety of the volume when listening to their CD is absent, and volume is determined by the band and, to some degree, the proximity to the speakers. Wherever you are though, it’s bloody loud. Loud and excellent.
HEALTH tear through a set. They really explode live. The menacing opening synth of ‘Death +’ rips though the air. Soft vocals play atop the synths, creating a nice polarity to the mayhem. This polarity is sparse tonight however, and the majority of songs remain brutal in their attack. ‘Tabloid Sores’ is so unashamedly abrasive, it leaves many of the audience fingering their lug holes and fretting for their ear drums. There are no gaps between songs in order to gauge just how much damage has been done. Bassist John momentarily adopts the kind of rock-star pose that would normally induce cringing due to its stereotypical and bloated nature. However, given the raucous temperament of HEALTH this evening, it seems rather apt. Its ostentatious quality is affirmed. There’s something mesmeric about watching them perform. A sense of wonder at what they’ll do next.
A warped steel drum sounds, then, ‘Die Slow’. The tremolo synth along with the drums shakes the audience to a beat they feel comfortable with. Elsewhere the drums are utterly punishing. Tribal and relentless, it’s astonishing that the kit stays together. When the pounding of drummer BJ alone doesn’t suffice, he’s backed by Jupiter on a floor tom, beating like a caveman. The band reel around on stage; sweating, shaking, generally getting into it. It’s a refreshing change to simply standing around.
When they finish, there’s an air of inebriated astonishment amongst the audience. Drunk on sound we are. HEALTH are a band that must be seen live. Ear bleeding would be one way to describe them, gum bleeding maybe seems more apt. You must see this band.
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