London duo Pandr Eyez is tricky to categorize. Seduced by the sultry electro R&B of their debut EP, 2011’s Eyes On You, when Ferren Gipson and Tom Lloyd returned in September with “Again And Again,” I fully expected more of the same. Instead, they’d taken old-school hip-hop and frosted it with ’80s pop. (“Robyn meets Beyoncé on an ’80s urban playground,” is how I described the tune.)
One half of a new double A-side single, now the companion to “Again And Again” has surfaced. “Physical Education” is an amalgamation of Pandr Eyez’s previous releases, with Gipson displaying her smooth R&B skills and also debuting some playful rapping, all as Lloyd keeps the pop flowing underneath.
“Sometimes it freaks me out,” Gipson recently explained to The FADER. “We’ll be making something and I’ll be like, ‘Shit, Tom, this doesn’t sound like anything else going on right now. Is that good or bad?’ We don’t have a wave to ride. We don’t want to get lost in a movement, but we also don’t want to be an island.”
Depends on the island. Deserted, no. An accessible destination where folks can head for some fun, yes. On the brilliantly cool “Again And Again” and now on “Physical Education,” Pandr Eyez certainly sound like they’re having fun — Gipson’s “wife me” rap and the quick melodic nod to Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” in the chorus is crystal-clear evidence of that.
With fans already flocking to the Pandr Eyez genre-hopping paradise, this kind of island living should look pretty good.
Purchase Pandrz Eyes – “Physical Education” via iTunes, Amazon MP3.