Noah Lennox aka Panda Bear is back, since he dropped a track this weekend. Nobody is even sure that the new song will be featured on his fifth upcoming album, which may be entitled ‘Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper’ – a full program there.
Actually, when I played the song, which was unofficially posted on YouTube, I thought, What? The Lady Black Mambazo are back? It’s so obvious they are abundantly sampled in the track with their vocals buried in some sort of aquatic effect and Lennox’s almost inaudible vocals added at the top. I have listened to Graceland too many times for not noticing! Is it a joke or a real Panda Bear new song? I was quite skeptical at first because all I could hear were the LBM’s voices!!
According to Spin and Pitchfork –curiously none of them even mention the Lady Black Mambazo – the song, called by fans ‘Marijuana Makes My Day’, but probably entitled ‘Cosplay’, was featured on a mixtape made for Assis! Debout! Couche! (Sit down! Stand up! Lay down!) a French festival attended by Panda Bear and collaborator Sonic Boom. A fan managed to extract the song from the mixtape and uploaded it on YouTube with this kaleidoscope imagery. Panda Bear’s music has often been qualified of kaleidoscopic, so no surprise there, but the song stops abruptly, meaning it is still a demo. However, I am not sure of this new direction, it’s not really original to me, there’s too much of these South African guys and not enough of these unique sounds Lennox got us used to, And what does it mean at the end? That Panda Bear wants to be the next Paul Simon?
