THE breezy guitar strum of Eddie Cochran’s “Three Steps To Heaven” is not a sound you’d instantly associate with two men renowned for taking drugs to make music to take drugs to. However, it’s the first thing you hear as Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom (Pete Kember) and Animal Collective’s Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) step onto the stage in near darkness and tap into their samplers.
Kember fell back in love with doo-wop and classic rock’n’roll a few years ago when he moved house and was able to access his full vinyl collection, created during lockdown in Portugal where they both live, having remained friends and collaborators since Kember produced Panda Bear’s 2011 album . On stage, they stand behind individual stations with modest set-ups of synths, samplers and various percussive items as trippy visuals unfold behind them, moving from kaleidoscopic bursts of bouncing bright colours through to expressive animations, such as a dancing, melting ice sculpture.
