Track Listing / Description 01 Hey Panda 02 Fall Off the Mountain 03 Bade Amey 04 Sisters Friends (featuring Rae Morris) 05 How the Best Was Won (featuring Bonnie "Prince" Billy) 06 The Grade 07 Yoga Goat 08 Stone Cold Slow 09 Toriafan 10 Hungriest Man (featuring Bonnie "Prince" Billy) 11 The Water Moves 12 La Masse (featuring Fryars) High Llamas present Hey Panda - a modern pop music/deep listening experience that could only issue forth from their personal quadrant of the galaxy. Hey Panda projects soulfully through an enervating abstract of today's popular music; the sound of the Llamas' stately melodies and expressive ditties laid open – blissfully shattered – with drums and vocals hitting different, burning sounds and contemporary production twists pulling the ear at every turn. For the past few decades, High Llamas have trafficked in contemporary pop sounds directed toward the avant end of the spectrum as much as not. But here the message was clear. Llamas' composer-in-residence Sean O'Hagan was determined to let go. Hey Panda does just that, with a set of tunes reflecting on multiple levels how definitions change over the course of a lifetime, radiating an optimism derived from the diverse conundrums of today. Eight years since their last release, the pop musical Here Come The Rattling Trees, High Llamas have reinvented themselves again, mixing their peerless harmonic voice with what Sean regards as the "extraordinarily good" production sounds of today on Hey Panda. Choosing not to look backward to former golden ages celebrated in earlier Llamas eras, Sean's instead found himself opened up by the sounds of music brought into the house by his adult children and the sounds encountered at sessions for which he's recently written arrangements. In addition to the more traditional contributions he made to The Coral's Sea of Mirrors album, plus his score for the Safdie brothers' 2022 film production, Funny Pages, Sean's drawn great inspiration through working with Fryars, Rae Morris, King Krule, Pearl and The Oyster, while also soaking up the work of Tierra Whack and Chicago's Pivot Gang, and being cheered on from a distance by longtime admirer Tyler The Creator.
