Selling – On Reflection

Derwin Dicker, aka producer Gold Panda, and Jas Shaw, one half of Simian Mobile Disco, have had a long-standing friendship that spans across a decade, including tours together and Shaw mixing two of Dicker’s solo records. Now they’ve taken that connection a step further with a fully collaborative debut album under the moniker Selling. 

Casting off predefined notions of what they wanted to create – including trading in their favoured modular and MPC-driven synths for a different kind of sequencer – their album On Reflection vaguely hints at the styles of what the pair have created separately in the past but travels in often unpredictable directions. While much of the record is propelled by arpeggiated melodies sitting at the forefront of the mix, Dicker and Shaw also play with these motifs, warping or transforming them across each track.

What keeps On Reflection continually compelling though is the attention to detail that the pair imbue into every track. Across its concise 42 minutes they move from shimmering electronics, and sounds akin to techno, to more ambient waves, with each mood laid across a foundation of intricate, textured layers of sound that seem to continually reveal themselves over repeated listens. Blink and you could easily miss a detail, but Selling will keep drawing you back to discover all of their secrets.

Listen to: Dicker’s Dream