Last Friday, The Supper Club welcomed electro-pop duo Panda Transport — the transatlantic collision of American jazz-pop artist Kathy Compton (Kat Panda) and French pop-electronica creator Thierry Holwek (Ti Panda). tableau had a chance to talk to Kathy Compton after watching the show:
tab: With Thierry being from Leon, and you being from around here, can I hear the story of how you two met and formed Panda Transport?
Kathy Compton: I met him on a Web site for musicians, looking for places to play in Europe. Thierry had listed venues in France. I thanked him, and he said if you want to come to France and say hello, contact me. Maybe he wasn’t expecting me to, but I did. We instantly hit it off as human beings. We didn’t play music together until he was asked to do a cover of a Joy Division song — “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. He needed help with an English accent, so he asked me to sing the words for him so that he could imitate me. He really liked my voice, so he kept it. Then radio got [and] heard the song and really liked it, so we thought we should start working together more on music. That’s how Panda Transport was born.
tab: How do you manage being a transnational band?
KC: I’m a pretty hard-core Francophile — for [the] past four years I’ve spent about a third of my year in Leon with him. And he comes over one or two times to America. So we end up spending a lot of time together, but it’s not the easiest thing to do. Just this year we started using Skype, so he can be there in the room with me and we can collaborate in a really good way. A lot of how we create things, too, is because of cultural differences and language barriers. It’s often like playing telephone with one another. I’ll say something to him and he thinks it’s entirely different than what I said. We actually use that as a creative tool.
tab: You’ve been compared to both The Postal Service and Air. Do you think these comparisons are accurate?
KC: They’re bands that we like, and because of the way that technology has gone, it is not necessary to put a musical group together to get a full sound. There are a lot of people doing what we do — The Postal Service, The Bird and the Bee ... there are a ton of acts out there that are just two people. You need the scientist, and you need someone to put a human voice on it. A lot of times I think I agree, because the sound is a bit similar using the software to make the music.
tab: Would you say that Thierry is the scientist?
KC: Yeah, I’m more of a constructionist. The way we write songs is that he’ll record something that he finds interesting, and he’ll send it to me, and sometimes I’ll throw away everything except for one melody line and then I’ll build it up again. I’ll send it back to him and he will sometimes tear that down again. Sometimes it will go back and forth between us four or five times within a period of a year. That way, it’s a true collaboration and we have no idea how it’s going to end up.
tab: What’s the best show you’ve ever played?
KC: The most exciting for us was the first American show we ever did. We were opening up for Girl Talk, and we didn’t really know what we were doing yet. There were 750 people in this big old cathedral that had been converted into a club. Everyone there was really respectful of what we were doing.
tab: Congratulations on your song being recently featured on Grey’s Anatomy. How would you describe the experience of getting your song on there and seeing your song reinterpreted for insertion into a show?
KC: One of the best ways for an independent musician still trying to establish themselves, which we are, is through music placement and licensing. So I had a fan in California of my solo work, and he stuck with me going into Panda Transport, and he was really just hell-bent on getting my music on TV. He got it to someone at Grey’s Anatomy and it sat in an editing suite for a year. And then they were looking for a Joy Division cover of a song called “Transmission,” and we have a song by that name, but not a cover. They liked it anyway. When I saw it on Grey’s Anatomy, personally, I couldn’t believe that I heard my music through the TV — it was like a cognitive dissonance.
tab: Your web bio asserts that your nomadic lifestyle is a supreme factor of your music, and you compose many songs on the road in Europe or in a motel. What kind of lifestyle do you and Thierry lead?
KC: We have pretty similar passions in life. Traveling and meeting people is important to us. We both thrive off of seeing new places ... I think we both just need stimulation all the time! We don’t have to travel in a van; we can fit all of our equipment into compact cars. We play anywhere people want to have us — we’re not looking for someone to pay us vast amounts of money. We just want people to enjoy our music.
tab: Describe your experience playing for the Supper Club last Friday.
KC: It felt good to know that we were going to come together in a new place, not built for doing shows, and have the people hearing the music on the same level as us. People seemed enthusiastic; they didn’t know where we were from, but they were open to what we were doing.
tab: What is currently in your CD player or playing on your iPod?
KC: I can’t stop listening to this English band called Friendly Fires. I put them on right after I finished our set. They make me really happy.
So there you have it. Love may tear some musicians apart, but Joy Division certainly seemed to bring these two together. And thanks to Skype, they’ve been able to keep up the collaboration even when they’re an ocean apart. Panda Transport will tour in Europe during March, and is currently working on a new album.
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