Artist: Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad
Album: In These Times
Release Date: April 10
Label: Controlled Substance Sound Labs/Music Is More Important
Grade: A-
These pandas have dubbed their way across the country, bringing fresh paint to the roots of reggae while keeping red, yellow, and green as primary colors. Mindful, psychedelic, relentless, and irie are a few of the best ways to describe this airtight group.
Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad (GPGDS) has been a live band working off a single studio album for six years, and its preference to performance over studio work is clear. The band's latest album, In These Times, manages to preserve its live sound while utilizing studio quality.
This is achieved by an additional step in production called "dubbing," where effects, mainly consisting of delay, are used to create the echo that became popular through reggae dub household names such as Lee "Scratch" Perry and King Tubby. GPGDS long-time live engineer Joel Scanlon is more than qualified for this step, allowing fans to bring the live feel back home.
When a band that's been on stage over 1,000 times decides to release its first electric studio album in six years, anticipation is high. After their January release of Country, the quintet's first attempt at an acoustic record, they've turned to electric instruments once again with the sound that started it all.
In These Times features some of the tracks from Country, such as "Healing" and "Love You More," with the same brilliant voices and a little more thump. Since the band has undergone changes itself, it only makes sense to create another album to represent the evolution.
In 2009, the group dropped two of its members: lead singer/guitarist Matt O'Brian and keyboard/melodica player Rachel Orke. The change was notable in its live performances and for the next year, GPGDS searched for a way to fill the gap while performing as a quartet.
The band's golden ticket came when multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Dan Keller joined the mix. As a songwriter and musician with incredible promise, Keller's compositions have become brow-raisers for fans familiar with GPGDS' material.
"Family Sake" is the clearest indicator of Keller's influence.
"Even as we sing together, Everybody's songs should be their own/ In what moves you /Is a melody of silence, bigger than the words and seeds we have sewn," Keller sings.
GPGDS manages to keep a devious deep, swinging style that leads a toe-tap into a full-on body shake - rendering listeners helpless to the groove.
Those familiar with the band's live set know the classic trickery, which can be called "the fake out." The boys start a song, and without warning, there is a seamless switch to another, changing the tempo and leaving the audience in shock. This method appears in In These Times with the track "Foundation," which begins with a teaser to "Burkina Faso."
Overall, In These Times is a feel-good album that carries itself with determination. GPGDS' expertise in effortless force through music is received with intense clarity, tone perfection, and attention to detail. It's not a surprise that a band of this stature would produce an album as enticing and majestic as this without breaking a sweat.
Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad will perform at The Tralf music hall in Buffalo on April 27.
Email: arts@ubspectrum.com
