TOY bassist Panda tells us his Top 10 of 2016
TOY just shared a video for “Another Dimension,” one of the standout cuts from their third album Clear Shot. Shot on Super-8 and interspersed with stock footage (and some cool old Legos), it suits the spacey song nicely. Watch below.
We’ve been asking artists to submit year-end Top 10 lists and TOY’s bassist, Panda, sent us ten things which inspired him: music, film, liturature, and more. And the band submitted one entry for him: his favorite food. Read that list, with Panda’s commentary, below.
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Panda from TOY’s Top 10 of 2016
Electronic Jugoton – Synthetic Music from Yugoslavia 1964-1989
A compilation we’ve been listening to recently. It has some really weird and wonderful sounds from that era. We hadn’t heard any tracks before. During the cold war you couldn’t import brands of electronic equipment like moog so they made their own versions out of disused bits of military equipment. The sounds are different to western ones and the songs a great. Weird disco and electronic oddities.
Witchfinder General
I rewatched this over Halloween and was struck by the graphic depictions of violence and the sheer nastiness of some of the characters. Its about the Witchfinder General (played by Vincent Price) charging around East Anglia in search of innocent women to accuse of witchcraft for seemingly the simple reason of him being a sadistic psychopath. This was common place back in the 17th century and you can’t help but feel as events unfold that it was probably scarily close to reality. A lot of fun.
John Cameron – kes (soundtrack)
This is stunningly moving and beautiful film and the soundtrack always brings a lump to my throat. The flautist was Harold McNair who always played on the tumbler by John martyn, one of my favourite folk records. The flute is often associated with a bird in flight as in Vaughan Williams ‘the lark ascending.’ Here it follows Billy’s kestrel up until it’s tragic end.
Carbonara
SAYSTTHE REST OF THE BAND: It’s Panda’s favorite meal. It’s all he ever thinks about. Sometimes he’ll casually drop it into a conversation to see someone’s reaction and gauge whether he really likes them or not. He has a certain mystical way of doing it that he’s never told anyone. We think he’ll take that particular piece of information to the grave. Even if you tortured him he wouldn’t tell you.
Patrick Hamilton
I’m reading Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky, a trilogy of books written during the interbellum period, each of which follows the perspective of one of three intertwined alcohol soaked characters in central London. It gets inside the strange psychologies that motivate and plague people and send people different emotional states. Patrick used to drink three bottles of black market whiskey a day. Hangover square is incredible too, as is the Gorse trilogy
Barnett Newman
I went to see a great exhibition of abstract impression at the Royal Academy and Newman was my favourite. The scale and depth of the colours is a nice thing to stare at and lose yourself for a while.
Saint Saëns
The carnival of the animals is so magical and enchanting sounding, and Danse macabre is deeply unhinged. He was a genius.
Tequila
We’ve heard recently that it has medicinal properties so we’re drinking that on tour at the moment. We heard recently after Leonard Cohen’s death that his favorite drink was tequila and cranberry. It’s called a red needle. We’ve since tried it and decided to drink something else.
Vladimir Ussachevsky – Charlie
I’ve been listening to a great compilation called the Tone Generation which has a few bits by this guy on it, he was an early pioneer of tape manipulation – he came from a classical background and used to augment live orchestras with crazy sounds from his Ampex tape recorder. He was also working with and helping to devise digital/analogue hybrid synths as early as 1968!
Gal Costa – Charles
She was a part of the late sixties Brazilian Tropicalia scene, along with Os Mutantes, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil among others. They used to collaborate with each other and create mad psychedelic pop tunes with an exotic latin flavour and politically charged lyrics. I’ve been listening to a great album by her from 1969 called ‘Gal’, The production of the album is incredible with tape delay and bonkers vocalisations layed on thick. It gallops along twisting and turning as songs morph from freaky fuzz-outs to brassy bossa-nova bucolia and back in the blink of an eye.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca3ksPVVFto
Atahualpa Yupanqui
One of our favourite guitarists. Born in the Pampas in 1908, his name in Quechua, a South American indian dialect, means ‘he who comes from faraway lands to tell the truth’. He learned from the ancient folkrorists of the North of Argentina his unique style, and widened it when in his youth travelled to eastern Europe and got influence by gypsy guitar picking. He had to be in exile for many years of his life, and was good friends with Edith Piaf.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIkMHhDaoDo
