Magic Panda Influences

When I first heard Aphex Twin many years ago, I was pretty much listening exclusively to alt-rock and had naively more or less written off all ‘dance’ music as repetitive and derivative. However, I was instantly mesmerised by girl/boy song’s beauty. It really challenged my preconceptions about music and opened up my mind to the endless possibilities of electronic music. I love the splicing of mellow plucked string harmonies with wild beats, and the emotional power of the break downs. Years later, when I started to get into electronic production myself, this was very much my initial point of reference – I wanted all my tracks to sound like this.

This was another early influence that helped shape my musical tastes. I could pretty much have chosen any track off Entroducing, but this one holds particular resonance for me. I love the sinister intensity, the dramatic rises and falls and the way it evolves and climaxes, and again, as with the first selection, the contrast of frenetic drums with slow atmospheric melodies – I have tried to capture this in several of my own productions.

I love the the dream-like quality of Bjork’s music and the bitter sweet uplifting melancholia captured best in Hyperballad. The chorus is a pure wave of joy.. I want to make music that impacts upon listeners the way that this track impacts upon me.

Carrying on the Iceland theme, some more ethereal dreamy electronica that has shaped my musical direction. I love the unworldly haunting beauty of mum, this is music from another planet!

Okay, this is the last Icelandic one. Chosen for the big, anthemic, rousing melodies and mesmerising, ceaseless intensity. I love the epic scale of Sigur Ros, they take music to another level. and the balancing of lightness with intensity throughout Takk has had a huge formative impact upon my musical direction.

I first heard this on a soundtrack to a Japanese film, All about Lily Chou Chou. The film is about the transportive, escapist nature of music, and explores the concept of music from the ether – the idea that music has the potential to communicate deep truths about the fabric of the universe – developed through the music of the fictional singer Lily Chou Chou. In the film, this Debussey piece is referred to as the original music from the ether. I love the delicate, light arpeggios and transportive nature of this piece and the concept of ethereal music is an inspiration for me.

Four tet inspired me to delve further into electronic production. I like really like the unusual textures of his music, his experimental manipulation of samples, the gentle melodies, multi layering of different sonic elements, his audio decoupage approach, combined with scattergun broken percussion. All these elements are embodied in Hands and fuse to create a beautiful and enchanting daydream.

I love emotional effect achieved by this track’s simple chord progressions and slowly evolving pads. Its amazing how this lightness and delicacy can produce and sustain such a powerful and intense mood. Pure genius.

I was absolutely blown away by this track, when I saw Nathan perform it live as part of a new electronica night in Norwich back in 2010. It opened up a whole world of music that I’d been totally unaware of. The track is such a cool journey, and the synth melody that merges from the percussive chaos is so powerful and emotive. I aspire to create a similar emotional affect through melody in my own music. His set really inspired me to take my own music from out of the studio and onto the stage.

Whilst not released until December last year, an unreleased version of this track has been on youtube for a couple of years and I’ve had it on constant repeat. I love this track, the physicality, lush simple melodies and the wild sonic experimentation – this is melodic techno at its best.