PA N DA B E A R
ATIBA
it’s more like a feeling. It’s a struggle with fear
and overcoming the fear. I feel like that process is
the same for all three disciplines.
That is very true.
Maybe a little more heightened in the case of
skating because you could hurt yourself. That’s
part of the reason I admire skating so much and
stand-up comedians—it just seems like an
extreme version of what I do in terms of putting
yourself out there and not having a safety net.
With music production, you spend time to get it
right so I guess the connection is more in the live
performances. You’ve got to get up there and do
it. There’s a threshold where once you pass it,
there’s no going back. Stand up and skating
seems like the ultimate to me. Another thing is
that skating is like a battle with yourself and
music can be the same thing.
That’s the same with a lot of things—
music, any art form. If you can see what
you could do better, you’re learning and
that’s the same.
The other thing that’s really interesting in terms
of parallels is how certain people are just
attracted to a skater’s style or a musician’s
aesthetic. It’s a really visceral response. You can’t
really say why it is. I feel like anytime I hear
skaters talking about why they like other skaters
it’s, like, “It just looks sick; their 360 flip looks
really good.” You can’t really define it. It just
makes you feel a really specific way.Where are you from?
I was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, but we
moved when I was young to Baltimore. I spent
age two through 14 or 15 in Baltimore. Then I
was in farmland in Pennsylvania for high school.
Then school in Boston for a couple of years.
Then New York. I dropped out of college and
then went to Lisbon after that.
You have a solo thing called Panda Bear,
but you’re still in Animal Collective.
How does that work?
I used to feel like I had to separate everything.
Making stuff for the group, I felt like I had toanda Bear’s music is so much like skateboarding—it’s about pushing the limits and
not staying the same. It’s a about being creative and looking at things like no one
else. Panda Bear has done a lot in his career, from being a member of Animal
Collective and having a successful solo career, to working with people like Solange and
winning a Grammy working with Daft Punk. I have known him for a long time through his
love for skateboarding and I am pleased to introduce you to Noah Lennox. —Atiba Jefferson200 ThrasherSo that’s probably the
different element that
you brought to this
compared to Grim
Reaper or Tomboy.
Yeah. I mean, Grim Reaper,
it’s a similar thing except it
was with Pete Kember and
I feel like that’s why I like working with other
people—I want them to bring their sensibility to
the thing. So Grim Reaper definitely feels like a
Sonic Boom thing. I can tell what he did. His
stamp is on it in a way that I really like. Tomboy,
a little bit less so, but in terms of the mixes on the
LP, it’s very his kind of perspective.
Your music has been in a lot of skate videos.
What do you think about that?
I’m psyched. I feel like, maybe more than
anything else, skate culture drives and seems to
move things forward in cool ways. I definitely
found out about a lot of music via skate videos.
The clothing, the personalities, the character, the
attitudes—culturally, I feel like it’s one of the most
influential forces there is in the world.
Do you see a connection between skating
and making music?
The connection I always make in making music,
playing basketball in high school and skating,P
make the thing a certain way or not finish it or
leave it sort of part of the way done. But as I get
older, I feel like the group has gotten better at
transforming songs. We started playing old songs
more than we used to and we’ll take an old song
and do it in a new way. So I feel like I can make
pretty much anything now and we can just
change it to be more of a group thing. I’m not so
concerned with that kind of thing anymore. But
it’s cool to be able to do the solo stuff and the
band stuff. It’s just a different dynamic. Playing
with the guys, there’s way more chances to be
surprised by the results, which is cool. When it’s
my own thing, I obsess
about what it’s going to be.
I don’t always have a super
clear vision of what the
thing’s going to become,
but there’s always a game
plan, so it can be less
rewarding in so far as it can
be less surprising.
Let’s talk about this new
record, Buoys. How was that
writing process? Do you sit
down and go, “It’s time for a
new record”?
It’s more like it’s time for a new
thing. I spend a lot of time just
thinking about that and then I
get into it and then just kind of
follow my nose after that.
Whatever seems to work or
feels good, I’ll just keep going
like that. So I’d made the new
stuff on a guitar, always with
some sort of drum machinery
element. There was always an
electronic element to it, but it
was really guitar, singing and
some sort of drum machine
thing. And then when I met up
with Rusty Santos about a year
ago, he was talking about
making sad trap and stuff,
reggaeton, he was working with
a lot of productions like that.
I thought it would be cool to
filter the stuff that I was doing
through that perspective or put
it in that kind of world in a way
and color it with that aesthetic
or sensibility. So I feel like that
kind of defined what the sound
of the record was.“Sk ti i lik
y self
and music can be
th hi g”
“Skating is like a
battle with yourself
and music can be
the same thing”