PANDA BEAR & SONIC BOOM^US/UK

It’s hard not to get swept away when Panda Bear and Sonic Boom open the door to their psychedelic pop universe, where sun-bleached harmonies, repetitive grooves and off-kilter studio experiments melt together into a sound both warm and blissfully warped.

Behind the project are Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear from Animal Collective, and British cult figure Pete Kember, better known as Sonic Boom from the legendary Spacemen 3. Together, they discovered a shared love of 60s pop, dub and analogue studio distortion on the acclaimed 2022 album Reset.

Now the duo return with the new collaborative album A ? of When, set for release shortly after Roskilde Festival. The album will not be released on streaming services, instead arriving on physical formats and download only – part of the duo’s wish to move music away from algorithms and back towards live experiences and real-world connection. “IRL not URL”, as they put it themselves.

Together – and especially in their own individual work – Panda Bear and Sonic Boom have helped define alternative rock and psychedelic sound exploration for decades. When the two visionary acid heads meet at Roskilde Festival, a special space emerges where the pop melodies of the past and the sonic visions of the future dissolve into one vast hallucinatory trip.