Bestial Delights Beside Linate's Lights: Caribou & Gold Panda, Circolo Magnolia.

If you go down to the grotty woods behind Linate, Milan's business airport, you're sure for some rather boisterously delectable surprises. As Camel Blues dissolve away like mourning woes amidst the sky-shattering thunderstorms outside, the frail tent that tonight will house some of contemporary music's most progressive electronic sounds feels as secure a haven as Bill Murray's Park Hyatt suite in the quite ephemeral Lost In Translation. Gold Panda's come down to the Circolo Magnolia in, well, not so much a disguise as such, as Rapunzel-esque plats flail about beneath his kempt foraging sprouts of facial hair, dangling from a Panda beanie. Obsessed with the wondrously subdued and endlessly apologetic culture of Japan, his kimono-like cardigan and kanji-splattered MacBook testify to that. And as for the Gold..? If when you stand wide-eyed and jaw agape your every sense is overloaded amidst a strobe abyss, Derwin Panda's 24-carat glitchy oriental beats nabbed off of anonymous VHS tapes transports you to the land of the Orient and eyes closed, visions of Fuji and cherry blossom scurry past the window of a bullet train. As Derwin constructs, loops and reconstructs his every sub-bass drum click, sampled zithers weave through the hazy mist of the oriental infusion that is Quitters Raga, whilst the emotive synth stabs of You are as sumptuous as an evening gorging on duck maki and the finest plum wine Wakayama has to offer. Blurring boundaries (over half an hour Gold Panda's euphoric approach is whisked with a sprinkling of dubstep, a touch of post-Crystal Castles melody and neo-Justice house drops) and turning your mind to a gorgeous mush, it's about bloody time Gold Panda committed something rather more tangible to plastic...

Caribou, another bestial bunch from across the channel and then over the pond in Canada already have one of the records of the year under their gleaming yet progressively more sweaty corresponding t-shirts. Strictly a solo artist, geek-chic mathematician-turned-psychedelic knob twiddler Daniel Snaith is bolstered by the most dexterous drummer since Donkey Kong, whose arms shimmer and flicker like fireflies shot over an open lomography aperture over ten seconds, especially against the brain-frazzlingly exotic kaleidoscope swirls that continue to compliment the Caribou experience effortlessly. Dotting older material amidst Snaith's latest stupendous long player Swim like a Euro coin lodged somewhere in a Glastonbury acre, the outrageous impeccability of just what a record it is springs to the forefront, as guitars largely replace the garish swooning synthesizers that empower the balmy Sun and the surging flutes, as the cabasa itches of Leave House whir alluringly. Album opener and retro 90s rave anthem Odessa is cruelly marred by a single bass string falling a semitone flat, although all's more or less forgiven by the time Snaith whips out his recorder like some Ontarian Pied Piper, and Kaili is as emotionally draining as a collaboration between Bon Iver and Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. The enervating discordance of Found Out with its confrontational pitch disregard is somewhat agitating and unhinges slightly what is otherwise the sort of spectacle only a Pitchfork pedant could flaw and as the dying embers of the forlorn Jamelia descend into a cacophonous amalgamation of kidney-rupturing snare clatters and trembling tremolo discordance, Snaith proposes, quite stealthily, precisely that which ought clog up iPods for the foreseeable future.

   Gold Panda by brilliantlydifferent