Animal Collective’s Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) and English producer Sonic Boom (Peter Kember) shared a new single, “Edge Of The Edge.” The track is set to land on the longtime collaborators’ upcoming album, Reset, due out via Domino digitally on August 12 and physically on November 12. Portions of the proceeds from Reset sales benefit environmental nonprofit Earth Island as well as psychedelic therapy research nonprofit MAPS.
Panda Bear and Sonic Boom have collaborated since Lennox gave a shout-out to Kember’s former band, Spacemen 3, in the liner notes to the 2007 Panda Bear solo LP, Person Pitch. The artists have worked together steadily since 2011 including on 2015’s Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper. A couple years after that album’s release, Kember moved to Portugal to be closer to Lennox, which is where he began crafting samples that would appear on Reset, which largely came to fruition as the pandemic raged. A press release for the album detailed the process.
Sonic Boom’s notion for Reset was simple enough: After lugging his records to Portugal, he slapped them on a turntable in a fresh space, renewing his fascination with old favorites he had not heard in years. There was the great early rock singer Eddie Cochran, for instance, or the stunning American harmonizers of The Everly Brothers. Something new struck him, too—the way the ornate intros to many of these standards felt largely like stage curtains, compelling in their own right even if they had very little to do with the hits that followed. Sonic Boom began crafting song-length loops from these preambles, twisting and bending the parts like scrap metal into chimeras. Panda Bear knew what to play and sing instantaneously and turned them into proper tunes.
So far, the duo has previewed Reset with two of those tunes, the previously released single, “Go On,” and the latest, “Edge Of The Edge.” The latter features elements of Randy & the Rainbows’ 1963 doo-wop hit “Denise.”
Watch the Danny Perez-created video for “Edge Of The Edge” below:
Reset Tracklist:
- Gettin’ to the Point
- Go On
- Everyday
- Edge of the Edge
- In My Body
- Whirlpool
- Danger
- Livin’ in the After
- Everything’s Been Leading to This
