Gold Panda - Lucky Shiner (Deluxe Edition) (2020/2010)

Where were you for “You”? Gold Panda’s hypnotic track entered the celestial tape deck just as music blog culture neared its halcyon heights in the spring of 2010, stuttering across an excited global community of writers and fans. The sound was different; a collision of pinched and pitched vocal cuts, percussive vinyl-static pops, and teary-eyed chord changes that felt both human and foreign, as if the strange interpretation of youthful nostalgia were broadcasting back from some faraway future. Impossibly replayable (and remixable as proven by Osborne and others), “You” built off “Quitters Raga,” the British producer’s breakthrough single nine months earlier, and cleared the runway for Lucky Shiner, a career-propelling, watershed work that proved Gold Panda could stir emotion with modest methods in the full-length format as well. From the symphony of twinkling bells and strings on “Snow & Taxis” to the high-flying melancholia of “Marriage,” Lucky Shiner shaped a vision of electronic music that tugged at the heart as much as it nodded to the dancefloor. Now, for the album’s 10-year anniversary, Ghostly International gives Lucky Shiner an expanded edition digital release featuring bonus tracks, past remixes, and the previously tour-only CD-R, Unreleased Medical Journal.

As the story goes, Lucky Shiner was named after Gold Panda aka Derwin Dicker’s grandmother Lakhi — “she pronounces it Lock-ee but a lot of people call her Lucky,” he explains (in 2020). “It's quite a funny title, you can imagine some old bloke in a British pub saying "oioi! you lucky shiner!" Dicker recorded the material in two sessions at his aunt and uncle's Essex home in the English countryside. "They went away over Christmas for two weeks and asked me to look after their dog. I'd walk Daisy in the morning and then make tunes till she pestered me to take her out again. I'd bounce down what I'd done, stick my headphones on and walk her, get ideas, and repeat the process." The resulting collection is viscerally linked to headphone listening, whether the playback hovers over the hum of a laptop fan or the wind of a walk outside. The album bore the trademarks of pastorally hued Englishness via its retreat origins, but also took certain shades from Derwin’s two years spent abroad studying Japanese culture, language, and history.

Perhaps only a novice would be open-eared and fearless enough to explore such disparate sources and makeshift experiments. Gold Panda reflects a decade on: “I’m most proud of the fact that I made a record with very little musical knowledge and a small amount of gear. I'm just listening to ‘Marriage’ now and it's only got 3 drum sounds and two are from a Gameboy running Nanoloop. ‘Parents’ is a guitar into a 4track. ‘Same Dream China’ has a kalimba played into the MPC then chopped up and pitched around. I recorded that into the MPC with a mic, I had no idea the mic needed phantom power, I just turned the record in gain up to max but I think the hiss made it better. At first, I was embarrassed about how it turned out, it was really pop when my influences in electronic music were more, well, underground and leftfield I suppose. I was really into the ‘glitch’ kind of sound, especially the Raster-Noton and Mille Plateaux stuff and anything similar. Now when I listen I can hear those influences quite clearly. When it was released I don't think I realized how good it was, considering I didn't have much gear. I was worried that the heavy compression might date it but it sounds alright.”

Lucky Shiner is an axiom for so much of the electronic music that would come in the decade since its humble inceptions. As myriad bedroom productions ebb and flow with trends and microgenres, flashing, sizzling, and often fading away, this one has withstood and remains unto itself the genuine article. Though ten years have passed, the music continues to strike with a timelessness, forever facing forward with a naive brilliance. Ghostly has championed that here in this comprehensive suite, offering more than one sitting’s worth of ways to experience Lucky Shiner. This set contains multiple interpretations of each single, digital rarities, and the lost-to-Discogs tour CD notably absent from streaming services until now, all extended to fans old and new.