Pixel Panda keeps things deliberately obscure on its full-length debut, The Nation of Symmetry. Buried in a blender of guitars, keyboards and jack-rabbit beats are the tag-team vocals of Do-Yun Kim and Nicholas Seider. One utilizes straightforward stylings; the other screeches like a weasel caught in a lawnmower blade. Burning through 14 songs in less than 30 minutes (only one tune breaches the 3-minute mark), Panda keeps things moving at a breakneck pace, abandoning ideas almost as soon as they're formed. The strategy underscores the punk ethic that grand musical statements tend to be insufferable but nevertheless produces a work of epic scope. The Panda is here to make as much artfuck noise as possible, audience -- and melody -- be damned. Each number begins with a threadbare musical concept that's expanded and reconfigured to the breaking point. Song titles such as "Our Band Is More American Than You" and "Annual Gift Man" hint at social and political criticism, but the vocals are indecipherable, so it doesn't matter. Nation is nothing if not original, though Pixel Panda is best appreciated in a live setting, where collective effervescence trumps all. Plus they wear panda masks. And we like panda masks.
