Half Of Where You Live by Gold Panda, released 11 June 2013 1. Junk City II 2. An English House 3. My Father In Hong Kong 1961 5. Find album reviews, stream songs, credits and award information for Half of Where You Live - Gold Panda on AllMusic - 2013 - Berlin by way of Essex DJ/producer Gold. Metacritic Music Reviews, Half of Where You Live by Gold Panda, The second full-length release for the Berlin-based electronic producer Derwin Schlecker was inspired.

It’s been three years since Gold Panda released Lucky Shiner – a sparkly debut album that showed off the British producer’s uncanny ability to bend and twist samples in ways that were both forward-thinking and somehow nostalgic (which makes sense since the album was apparently named after his grandmother). While Lucky Shiner made for something of an insular listening experience, the new Gold Panda record, Half of Where You Live, seems to reflect the producer’s experience of essentially touring the world for the better part of three years. Tracks like “Berlin” (the album’s first single) and “Enoshima” explore a kind of wanderlust that seems to permeate the record, which is full of sounds and snippets Gold Panda collected on his various global adventures. I called him up in Berlin to find out more about how the new album came to be.

STEREOGUM: Are you somewhere in Germany? GOLD PANDA: Yeah, I’m in Berlin.

I’m living here at the moment. It’s been two years actually. STEREOGUM: Berlin seems to be the place right now. So many New Yorkers I know have migrated to Berlin over the past couple of years. Comix Mt-7100 User Manual.

GOLD PANDA: Yeah, its ’cause it’s cheap and it has all the things people want from a city, I guess. The rent is cheap and fair – well it was – I think it’s steadily increasing. There are a lot of new start up companies here and lots of party things to do. I guess it’s good spot for creative people.

There is a good energy here right now. STEREOGUM: Do you have a studio there? GOLD PANDA: I just have a room in my flat that’s got all my stuff in it. Not just studio stuff, but all my books and my Xbox and everything. STEREOGUM: It’s hard to believe it’s been three years since Lucky Shiner came out.

It seems like just the other day for some reason. Why the long gap in between releases? GOLD PANDA: Well mainly I was just touring the last record for so long. I just got tons of gig offers and sort of just took them without thinking about how that would affect my creative process, especially because I don’t record on the road and I’m not really able to write anything when I’m traveling. I don’t really think about it and then two years fly. So, I took time off to write a new record, but then people wanted me to tour the last one a little more so I just kind of carried on.

I don’t think the new record actually took that long to make, I just spent a lot of time not doing it. I think most of the record was done over the course of last year – from January of 2012 to January of this year. I make a lot of music and the last one I did really quickly – like, in three weeks. For this one I wanted to wait until I had tracks that sounded like they really really went together and yeah, I feel a lot more a lot happier with this album as a whole. I know there’s no huge track like “You” on it, but that was kind of the point. I felt a lot of pressure to do tracks that weren’t maybe as popular – or as pop – as the old stuff, and once I got over the fact that I couldn’t physically or mentally do that music again because I’d already done it – and there’s no point trying to please other people – it got kind of easy. But it took me a while to get over the fact that the last record did so well, and that people were paying attention to my music.

I realized that I shouldn’t worry about it and just carry on and do the music I want to do. STEREOGUM: That’s an interesting phenomenon.

I guess some people would say it’s a good problem to have, but success can really be a weird thing. People always talk about the sophomore slump, but it is a real phenomenon. It can really trip you up when it comes to making album number two. Were you surprised by the reaction to Lucky Shiner?

GOLD PANDA: Definitely, because I never actually intended to release my music. Some people found me on MySpace and said, “We think this music is good, why don’t you come and meet us,” and that turned out to be the Witchita label in the UK.