News

Fancy a different card at Christmas? Postcards of your favourite pandas are now on sale at John Hansard Gallery!

On river and land you’ll find those pand…as

People & animals having fun posing for a photo in this lovely ‘Community as Art’ Exhibition.

We had a great time performing at All In The Mind. Such a friendly crowd who were always ready to join in with our Panda Wellness Cabaret.

Mon 27th June 9:30pm. Chaplins, Bournemouth. Join us for Forbidden Planet. It’s always a surreal evening with DJ Conrad and eclectic music & performance acts.

Sun 3rd July 3pm Winchester Hat Fair (North Walls Recreation Ground). Come and find us bringing our special blend of Panda Joy to the good people of Winchester.

We had a lovely chat with Zoe Hanson from the So SO Show podcast talking about toy pianos, potato mindfulness, and all the good work that pandas do in the community. You can listen to the feature at https://thesososhow.co.uk/the-so-so-show-episode-72-friday-8th-october/ from about 3mins 20 into the clip.

As part of MAST’s family fun day we invited people to create a community poem. Here’s what the collective brain came up with:

Tale as old as time
First I was afraid I was petrified – thinking I could never live without you by my side
Twinkle twinkle little star
No matter what happens I’ll still be there for you!
My head and my heart is tearing me yeah
We will rock you like a potato
Kakana Matara
Livin’ on a prayer
5 little men in a flying saucer round the world one day
It’s none of your business
It’s getting better all the time

We had a great time as part of MAST’s Festival of Loveliness, running a high energy Panda Wellness workshop with the kids and then a performance for the families later. Activities included potato mindfulness #PotArtO

We had a brilliant time at Freezone Festival. Lovely friendly crowd, and great to catch up with other acts including Sister Agnes, Theda Rose, and Lisa from the Retro Dolls.

We’re doing some live performances in August: the lovely vegan cafe at October Books in Southampton, the first ever Freezone Festival near Wimborne, and Southampton’s All Aboard event on Bank Holiday Saturday. We’re looking forward to some real world happenings on our Thread-Bear Tour!

We’re really excited to be the first act on The Point’s Garden Stage when live events resume on Weds 9th June. It really is a 4pm start, so make your excuses to end that Zoom call and head over to Eastleigh. Panda on!

In common with other varieties of bears pandas don’t hibernate, so we’re left to make the most of the lockdown in the same manner as humans. This photo was taken just before Christmas 2020 by our friend Claudia from We Make Southampton who was showing us around the sights of the city. We’re not likely to be doing any real world performances for a while, so we plan to continue looking through the archive footage of our musical history. If anything interesting crops up (and it usually does!) we’ll be sure to post it here. In the mean time we wish you all the best for 2021. We all know it’s not going to be easy, but just think of all the fun we can have when gigs can happen again!
Much love & panda hugs,
MC Meles & Guru SydPanda 🐼🐾

Some of the content of this interview had to be edited out due to excessive wind in Guru Sydpanda’s garden. Luckily, there’s enough to show how Panda-monium continues to promote the benefits of surrealist musical cabaret for both humans and other animals. Whether inhabiting art installations or presenting Taoist wisdom for the modern age, Panda-monium always has something up the sleeve of its collective onesie.

Click here to hear the podcast! (Panda-monium feature is about 2 mins into the clip).

As gigging pandas we know that if you look after your instruments, your instruments look after you.

In the all-white space the fluorescent light tube blurs the boundaries of walls, floors & ceiling. This reverberation chamber lends a heightened presence to the voices, laboured breathing and squealing shoes of the dancing pandas. As the light fades an ominous rustle, blending and bending the hiss of falling water with the crackling of ant colonies, suddenly rushes into the space. Now, you are in total darkness…and the Bears sound unfamiliar.

Panda-monium’s motto is ‘pan amo mundi’. This is bear Latin for ‘ Love to the world and everything in it’. So, we wish you all well in this difficult time. Pandas don’t hibernate and neither will we. Although we won’t be performing face to face, as the creators of the Wellbeing Through Nonsense methodology we will continue to provide online nonsense to lift your spirits and let you know you are not alone… thanks for all you support.

Stay safe, keep connected and 🐼🔛

MC Meles & Guru Sydpanda

We are excited to be starting our Mini Bar Bear Tour with a warm-up gig at the Vegan Sausage Fest at The Art House in Southampton on Fri 21st Feb. We’ll be doing a set upstairs before the main event starts, and another set in the interval.
Then it’s off to Chaplins in Bournemouth on Monday 24th, where we’re looking forward to returning to their excellent Forbidden Planet event, sharing the bill with the Theda Rose Band and Fragile Lucy.
Weds 26th marks our first ever folk club gig, and is also Johnny Cash’s birthday. Both these happenings are a definite cause for celebration at The Guide Dog in Southampton.
On Friday 28th we’re rounding off the week by hosting (Ant and Dec panda stylee) the monthly Moving Voices open mic at the Art House.

We are excited to announce the following gigs for your diaries:

Thurs 30 Jan, Write A Note, Caskaway, Southampton.
Mon 24 Feb, Forbidden Planet, Chaplins, Bournemouth.
Weds 26 Feb, Focsle Music, The Guide Dog, Southampton.

Also on Friday 28th Feb we’ll be hosting (Ant & Dec stylee) for Moving Voices at the Art House, Southampton.
No advance tickets needed for any of the above!