expé/noise

Revanchist

On Embers

upsammy - Being is a Stone
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 132S
Release Date: 02 March 2023
Purchase: https://pan.lnk.to/BeingisaStone

upsammy shares ‘Being is a Stone’, the first single from the upcoming full-length album ‘Germ in a Population of Buildings’ out via PAN on May 5th.

Mastered by Rashad Becker
Mixed by James Ginzburg
Artwork by Jonathan Castro Alejos and Tharim Cornelisse

upsammy - Being is a Stone (PAN 132S)

upsammy - Germs in a Population of Buildings
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 132
Release Date: 05 May 2023
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/GerminaPopulationofBuildings

On her sophomore album "Germ in a Population of Buildings”, upsammy moves through her surroundings with the curiosity of a place-bending landscape architect. The album is rooted in her interest for ambiguous environments in constant shift, and the feeling of discovering strange patterns in different ecosystems. Often, the Amsterdam-based artist finds herself zooming in and out beyond a place's most recognizable surface features to inhabit the microscopic and gigantic. Gathering field recordings and evocative environmental sounds, she shapes this source material into vibrating electro-acoustic rhythms and unstable, psychedelic textures.

upsammy's debut album, 2020's critically-acclaimed "Zoom", was praised for its careful reimagining of IDM, evolving vignettes that nodded towards the dancefloor without being shackled to its rigid set of rules. On "Germ in a Population of Buildings" her process has evolved considerably; the skeletal trace of IDM is still present but it's been trapped in amber, allowing her unique sonic landscape to develop organically. 'Being is a Stone' is a proof of concept in many ways, layering upsammy's contorted voice in rickety patterns beneath a lattice of fragile rhythms and faintly melancholy synths. It's never immediately obvious where the sounds are coming from - a hiccuping beat might be glass cracking underfoot, and larger pulses could be wet concrete, rusted iron or bent plastic. As the sounds develop they morph into each other, demolishing what came before and building on top of the ornamental wreckage.

On the dynamic 'Constructing', upsammy's sound design fluxes through hyperactive bass music structures, abstracting expectations at every turn. Often her sounds are whisper quiet, rattling and vibrating until heavier masonry drops and disrupts the structure. And when discernible rhythms subside into the background, like on the album's eerie title track, they become almost illusory, morphing between the real world and the electronic. upsammy's processed voice works like a bridge between these realms, snaking between stark, whimsical melodies on 'Patterning', arching from AutoTuned detachment into cooing, dreamy intimacy. By considering the harmonies between each location she's visited, upsammy has been able to build a unique topology that's an uncanny digital amalgam of her lived experience. It's a thoughtful alternative in an era more concerned with flatting the landscape than crumpling it and examining its peaks and troughs.

Mastered by Rashad Becker
Mixed by James Ginzburg
Artwork by Jonathan Castro Alejos and Tharim Cornelisse

Germ in a Population of Buildings

upsammy - Germ in a Population of Buildings (PAN 132)

upsammy - Constructing (PAN 132)

Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet - Ledge
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 139S2
Release Date: 01 June 2023
Purchase: PAN.lnk.to/Ledge
Pre-Order Album: PAN.lnk.to/STROBE.RIP

Amnesia Scanner and Freeka Tet share 'Ledge', the second single from the upcoming full-length album 'STROBE.RIP' out via PAN on June 16th.

Written by Amnesia Scanner
Produced by Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet
Mastered by Enyang Urbiks

Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet - Ledge (PAN 139S2)

REVOLVE

Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet - STROBE.RIP
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 139
Release Date: 16 June 2023
Purchase: PAN.lnk.to/STROBE.RIP

Amnesia Scanner’s third full-length album titled STROBE.RIP is a collaboration with the artist and musician Freeka Tet, who joins the album and associated live performances as a vocalist and creative collaborator.

Released by PAN records, STROBE.RIP is part of a broader series of live performances, installations, videos and physical products created by the group.

Since its inception in 2014, Ville Haimala and Martti Kalliala have continued to evolve and redefine Amnesia Scanner through experimentation across online and IRL realms. This album brings them a step closer to the latter.

With French-born, New York City-based Freeka Tet on board, STROBE.RIP acquires a new array of influences that draw from the multidisciplinary artist’s hacker mindset, shaping the sound into new forms. As a programmer and technologist, Freeka Tet’s work straddles commerce and art, combining intuitive and performative modes of expression with emergent technology and creative coding. Much like Amnesia Scanner, Tet draws from online vernacular and techno-magic to create satirical, uncanny work – artificially augmented, and highly engineered sounds, textures, images and ideas that translate memes and code into a more human and affective language.

Haimala and Kalliala say, “Amnesia Scanner is now living in the world it has built,” signaling a sincere commitment to the act. The human dimension in STROBE.RIP is chaotic: a reverse hero’s journey that merges deep-fried baroque with the quasi-angelic into a psychotic megamix of tropes, lyrics, genres, and sonic palettes that are both disorienting and deeply resonant.

The opening track Tongue Demons perfectly summarizes this, with blaring synth stabs and frenetic drum patterns paving the way for a broken melody arranged through a digital brass chord progression. Giggle and Bounds follow right after: two outstanding pieces of introspection signaling the melodic turn of the album, with the latter almost posing as a weirdo 2-step ballad filled with deep pads and pitched-up and down vocals.

The 160bpm, 4-to-4 pulsing kicks of Ledge and the palm-muted chords of Disperse serve as a perfect build-up to Ride, right in the middle of the tracklist: a summer hit from hell, a crooked saxophone-graced tune carried by a crusty, Balearic acoustic arpeggio. The alt acoustics continue with Damon, or at least before the track turns from Nirvana’s Unplugged to Slayer’s double kick drum pedals and becomes thrashtronica with Tet on screamo duties.

Things get softer with Clown, specifically in the chanted refrain, and even more aetherial in the almost trip-hop timbres of abandoned.club, where chopped-and-screwed vocals sing “I lost myself in the club.” Scorpions, Bats & Spiders is the abstract gem declaring the death of Deconstructed Club Music—a genre created by journalists and pioneered by the duo, among others. The words “deconstructed,” “club,” and “panel discussion” are spelled out in a vortex throughout the track as if they were to be carved on the genre’s imaginary gravestone. Closing the album, the saw bass of Cat serves Euro-electro à la Benny Benassi’s Satisfaction, while the doomed outro Merge closes the album in a triumphant aggregation of noise and pixelated drums that render the image of a crust-punk ensemble.

Written by Amnesia Scanner
Produced by Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet
Mastered by Enyang Urbiks

Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet - Scorpions, Bats & Spiders (PAN 139)

Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet - Tongue Demons (PAN 139)

LABYRINTH

Marina Herlop - La Alhambra 
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 141S
Release Date: 01 September 2023
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/LaAlhambra

Marina Herlop shares ‘La Alhambra’, the first single from the upcoming full-length album ‘Nekkuja’ out via PAN on October 27th.

Composed, produced and recorded by Marina Herlop
Vocals by Marina Herlop
Mixed and mastered by Joker
Artwork by Mati Klarewin

Marina Herlop - La Alhambra (PAN 141S)

Honour - U&Me (decemeberseventeen)
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 121S
Release Date: 06 September 2023
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/U-Me

Honour shares ‘U&Me (decemberseventeen)’, the first single from the upcoming full-length album ‘Àlàáfíà’ out via PAN on November 3rd.

Built and destroyed by Honour
Mixed by Honour
Mastered by Jason Goz
Artwork by Honour

Honour - U&Me (decemeberseventeen) (PAN121S)

V/A - mono no aware もののあわれ

Format: 2xLP / Digital
Label: PAN
Cat.No: PAN 77
Release Date: 17 March 2017

http://p-a-n.org/

purchase:
site: http://bit.ly/2mQN5AO
bandcamp: http://bit.ly/2n9ToSm

mono no aware (もののあわれ) is the first compilation to be released on PAN, collating unreleased ambient tracks from both new and existing PAN artists.

Featuring Jeff Witscher, Helm, TCF, Yves Tumor, M.E.S.H., Pan Daijing, HVAD, Kareem Lotfy, ADR, Mya Gomez, Sky H1, James K, Oli XL, Bill Kouligas, Flora Yin-Wong, Malibu, and AYYA, the compilation moves through more traditional notions of what is called ’ambient’, to incorporating wider variations that fall under the term.

“Mono no aware”, ‘the pathos of things’, also translates as “an empathy toward things", or "a sensitivity to ephemera”. A term for the awareness of impermanence, or the transience of things. A meditation on mortality and life's transience, ephemerality heightens the appreciation of beauty and sensitivity to their passing. In investigating the passing of time, the boundaries between memory and hallucination become blurred; between fiction and reality. The movement of time transforms into an eternal present.

The album is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, featuring photography by Molly Matalon and design by Bill Kouligas. A limited version of 100 copies will be released as a special art edition in collaboration with Mount Analog for the LA Art Book Fair 2017, before going on general release.

mono no aware

15. Oli XL - Heretic (PAN 77)

Puce Mary — The Drought
Format: LP / CD / Digital
Cat.No. PAN 87
Release Date: 5 October 2018 
Pre-order album: bit.ly/2KGmn9f / bit.ly/2KGL7Ot

Building from a reputation of arresting live performances and critically acclaimed releases Puce Mary breaks new ground with The Drought, evolving from the tropes of industrial and power electronics to forge a complex story of adapting to new realities. Remnants of noise still exist, sustaining the penetrative viscerality offered on previous records, however The Drought demonstrates an intention to expand on the vocabulary of confrontational music and into a grander narrative defined by technical and emotional growth.

Bringing together introspective examination with literary frameworks by writers such as Charles Baudelaire and Jean Genet, Puce Mary’s compositions manifest an ongoing power struggle within the self towards preservation. The traumatised body serves as a dry landscape of which obscured memories and escape mechanisms fold reality into fiction, making sense of desire, loss and control. The Drought presents both danger and opportunity; through rebuilding a creative practice centred on first person narrative and a deliberate collage of field recordings and sound sources Puce Mary injects an acute urgency across the album seeking resilience.

“To Possess Is To Be In Control” makes use of lyrical repetition as an ambiguity of two selves, or a divided self, attempting to consume one another, while “Red Desert,” named after Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1964 film, portrays the individual subsumed by surrounding environmental forces. The seven-minute epic “The Size of Our Desires” acts as the emotional tipping point of the record; amongst the ominous drone and dense feedback flutters almost-beatific melodies, while the lyrics reveal a romantic call to be swept up in the midst of an increasingly uninhabitable world.

Rather than escape, The Drought dramatises a metamorphosis in which vulnerability is confronted through regeneration. Noise and aggression no longer act as an affront to react against but part of a ‘corporeal architecture’ where space, harmony and lyricism surface from the harsh tropes of industrial music. The Drought chronologises a transformation through a psychological famine, new ways of coping akin to plant survival in a desert – to live without drying out.

The release is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring art by Torbjørn Rødland

@pucemary
p-a-n.org

expé/noise

LA KRÉATURE