Gold Panda, St. John at Hackney Church

It is difficult to make an age-old concept like East meets West seem fresh, but with his laptop electro, Gold Panda (or Derwin R. Powers) just about manages it. Born in Peckham, the DJ is heavily inspired by his sojourns in Asia, as you’ll hear at his gig at St. John at Hackney Church on December 12.

Obsessed with Japanese culture since he was a kid, Derwin learned the language at SOAS and then spent a year living in Japan. You can hear the influence of the East in his debut album Lucky Shiner (2010): there’s the zither’s (a many-stringed instrument) drone on Same Dream China, a high pitched mosquito’s whine on You , Indian chanting on India Lately: all laid over percussion samples. It’s not quite ambient, it’s not quite techno, it’s definitely not despised 'EDM', but the overall effect is scintillating and intriguing. Even thought-provoking.

Derwin has been touring a lot since Lucky Shiner’s success and, again, this itinerary is reflected in his work. The tracks on his latest album Half of Where You Live (released last June) are almost like sonic postcards, or love letters, from his travels. Globetrotting Derwin takes us from the lush jungle scenery of Brazil to Japan’s leaf-rustling Enoshima to a serene rush-hour moment (if such a thing exists) in Flinton .

Derwin’s is a minimal aesthetic. If he wrote poetry, he’d write haikus. Instead, he taps away at his computer, skillfully upending standard genres of electronic music and reassembling them into signature Gold Panda tracks. It’s the kind of thing capable of inducing compulsive foot-tapping, quiet hypnosis—maybe even a bit of religious fervour? Good thing he’s playing at Hackney Church, then.