On Record – Panda Bear & Sonic Boom: A ? OF WHEN (Domino)

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Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

The second collaborative album between Animal Collective’s Panda Bear and founding member of Spacemen 3, Sonic Boom, looks to build on their successful work together on the Reset album of 2022.

A ? OF WHEN takes a different approach, using as its source material harp loops from Mary Lattimore, together with steel drum sequences, pedal steel webs and fragments of a mariachi band.

While the music might sound detached, it is actually a sharply observed commentary on the state of the world. As the album progresses they look at online exhaustion and progressive depression, political upheaval and the environment.

As the text on the press release states, “The goal is for the music to create physical connections between people, to encourage them to enjoy a real experience in the world with it and each other.”

What’s the music like?

In relation to the objective of the album, it is very much job done – for a listen to this album gives the listener a lasting positivity.

There may be some lyrical dark spots on the surface but musically this is bright sunshine, a celebration of two musical minds meeting and sparking some genuinely uplifting music.

The obvious reference points are The Beach Boys, with a frisson of The Mamas and the Papas and also The Zombies, but all updated with electronic knowhow and hazy production warmth. The source material – Lattimore’s harp and the accompanying steel band brightness – is economically used, and proves the perfect complement for Panda Bear’s vocals.

These are as distinctive as ever, and burrow into your brain via the incredibly catchy Lucky Charm or the light / dark alternations of Graveyard, up in tempo but down in lyrics.

The chorus of Never Givin’ In is a lasting show of strength, while the upbeat title track follows suit. Pray to you is immersed in watery strings, while Somethin’ that lasts shows this music has staying power, finding grace and tender moments among the woozy reverb.

Does it all work?

It does. The two work easily in each other’s company, and the resultant sound is like a musical heatwave.

Is it recommended?

Heartily. Music can be so much fun in collaboration, and A ? OF WHEN celebrates the outcome. Pure musical enjoyment was rarely so immediate!

For fans of… Animal Collective, The Beach Boys, Peaking Lights, Supertramp

Listen / Buy

You can explore purchase options for A ? of When on the Domino Music website

Published post no.2,981 – Thursday 13 August 2026

#AmbientAugust no.13 – Matthewdavid’s Mindflight – O’cean Dream

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by Ben Hogwood

Some lovely blue sky musical thinking here…a track you can literally dive into, from an album full of bright lights, which I reviewed for DMC World on its release in 2016.

Do seek this out if you haven’t heard it before!

Published post no.2,980 – Thursday 13 August 2026

#AmbientAugust no.12 – Moby – Long Ambients

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by Ben Hogwood

A direct quote from a review I wrote for DMC World, around the release of this album:

Moby is fundamentally a composer of ambient music, proficient in the form ever since the release of 1993’s Ambient album, which made a great deal from the smallest cells of melody, harmony and rhythm.

Long Ambients is cut from the same cloth, thought there is little to no rhythm here as this is music designed for yoga, sleep, meditation – or even the calming of panic. Moby himself swears by this music, and has made it available for free. There are eleven tracks, all longer than 15 minutes and one as long as 35, but they are essentially timeless.

Moby employs slow, broad loops that repeat with little or no variation, but they are recognisably his because of the voicing he uses, giving the first track in particular a subtle majesty. When heard in the right environment each of the pieces takes on the appearance of a ritual, with an intimacy to appeal to the private listener but a broad sound scape that can reach a bigger audience too. These pieces can subtly enhance your mental condition and are well worth the outlay – which is nothing!

Published post no.2,979 – Wednesday 12 August 2026

#AmbientAugust no.11 – John Luther Adams – Become Ocean

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by Ben Hogwood

There is something very elemental about the music of John Luther Adams, and witnessing Become Ocean live made a very strong impression. Listening to it literally repoints your brain, as I discovered back in 2018 with the London Contemporary Orchestra.

The composer’s own words, from the page dedicated to Become Ocean at his publisher, Wise Music, are as follows:

“Over the years my orchestral music has become simpler and more expansive.

Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing (1991-95) contains four different musical textures. In the White Silence (1998) has three. For Lou Harrison (2002) reduces this to just two.

In Dark Waves (2007), I finally got to one. When I first heard that piece I began to wonder if I could sustain a similar sound for a longer span of time. The result is Become Ocean, a meditation on the vast, deep and mysterious tides of existence.

The title is borrowed from a mesostic verse that John Cage wrote in honor of Lou Harrison’s birthday. Likening Harrison’s music to a river in delta, Cage writes:

LiStening to it
we becOme
oceaN.

Life on this earth first emerged from the sea. And as the polar ice melts and sea level rises, we humans find ourselves facing the prospect that once again we may quite literally become ocean.”

Published post no.2,978 – Tuesday 11 August 2026

#AmbientAugust no.10 – M83 – Coloring The Void

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by Ben Hogwood

I have always admired the ability of Anthony Gonzalez to paint expansive musical pictures in his work as main writer for M83. However he is an extremely effective ambient writer too, as he showed on the largely instrumental release Digital Shades Vol. 1 in 2007, writing almost completely without beats. Coloring The Void is a completely unhurried example from the album’s core, scaling the peaks of euphoria as it progresses:

Published post no.2,980 – Monday 9 August 2026