Gold Panda returns with TON UP, a brilliantly stubborn new album for Studio Barnhus: eight rough-hewn dance tracks and two cozy little service-station interludes, all crafted with the robust determination of a producer who knows that 140 bpm is not so much a tempo as a way of life. Made with Derwin Dicker’s unmistakable sampler-bashing touch, the tracks on TON UP carry the raw knock of old-school hip-hop instrumentals, pushed through pumping house-music machinery and ready to cause absolute trouble on any half-decent sound system. Here you’ll find zero of that dreaded, over-explained “maturity” usually demanded of beloved electronic artists several albums deep into the game. Instead, Gold Panda just sounds as happily locked in as ever, carelessly chasing the physical joys of pressure, swing and repetition. TON UP is functional, funny and oddly tender club music, arriving just when the world needs it the most (June 26 that is.)
