Anne Imhof, Eliza Douglas, Billy Bultheel - SEX
Label: PAN
Cat.No. PAN 116
Format: LP / DL
Release Date: 3 September 2021
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/SEX

‘SEX’ is the latest record from acclaimed contemporary artists Anne Imhof, Eliza Douglas and composer Billy Bultheel. It was composed during the development of Imhof’s art exhibition of the same name, previously exhibited at Tate Modern, London, The Art Institute of Chicago and Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea.

Music is core to Imhof’s work. It functions not only as a soundtrack to perform to, but rather that music itself, and the act of performing music, becomes a work of visual merit by its very nature. Imhof’s performance work, in collaboration with Douglas, is often described as visually being a futuristic, nihilist take on pop culture citing metal and grunge aesthetics while making connections to thematics of classical painting. The concert itself becomes a visual language in Imhof’s performative work which sits evenly placed with her painting and sculpture.

Imhof, Douglas and Bultheel adapted the songs from how they appeared in the exhibition ‘SEX’, with the result being a compelling record that can act as an imaginative accompaniment to the ‘SEX’ performances, as well as stand alone as a progressive collection of contemporary compositions.
‘SEX’ references punk, industrial and grunge, while boldly juxtaposing these forms with music of the classical and baroque period. ‘SEX’s compositions combine classical formals and orchestration with vocals that are rooted in subcultural traditions, thus beautifully overdrawing and overwriting these classical forms with the composer's own. Harpsichord and oboe are combined with distorted electric guitar, or exuberant string ensembles with heavy industrial drums.

The amalgamation of genres contained in the album was also integral to the choreography of the ‘SEX’ performance, where waltzes and tangos were contrasted with stage diving, slam dancing and moshpits. What resulted was a surreal ballroom, loaded with desire and aggression. In the same vein, the record fearlessly shapeshifts, blending genres and styles to evoke an impressive array of moods. The voices and instruments crush like operatic electric waves throughout wide rages, laughing, shouting, coming close and being far. Oscillating between fragility and flamboyance, Douglas and Imhof’s versatile voices reinvent themselves from one song to the next, while singing songs of love and hate.
The final song on ‘SEX’ ends with a lyric from the band LOW, “All you Pretty People, you’re all gonna die”. This ambiguous moment, a prophecy sung in Douglas’ vibrating baritone voice, rattles the listener despite the mundane truth of the statement. This complexity is reflected in the album itself, allowing for an unusual multiplicity of emotions and interpretations with impressive depth and dynamism.
The record’s release coincides with the final performance of ‘SEX’ at Castello di Rivoli in Turin in September 2021 and the opening of Imhof’s Carte Blanche exhibition ‘Nature Mortes’ currently on view at Palais de Tokyo, Paris through October 2021.

The album is mixed & engineered by Ville Haimala and mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring design by ZAK Group and photography by Nadine Fraczkowski.

Anne Imhof, Eliza Douglas, Billy Bultheel - SEX (PAN 116)

E-Saggila / Exploited Body — Split
Format: 12"
Cat.No: PAN 125
Release Date: 25 November 2021 
Purchase: https://p-a-n.bandcamp.com/merch/e-saggila-exploited-body-split

Fourth installment of PAN's split 12'' series, featuring Toronto-based producer E-Saggila (Northern Electronics, Hospital Productions) and Helsinki's experimentalist and Changeless label founder Exploited Body.

Limited to 300 copies, hand stamped, no repress.

The EP is mastered by Beau Thomas

E-Saggila / Exploited Body - Split (PAN 125)

Marina Herlop - Pripyat
Label: PAN
Cat.No. PAN 128
Format: DL
Release Date: 20 May 2022
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Pripyat

Marina Herlop is often described as a pianist, a lingering remnant of her classical training. But what strikes the listener on Herlop’s breakout track miu is the intricate trickery of her voice, tracing rhythmical clusters around the subtlest of musical beds, in a technique inspired by Carnatic music of Southern India. 

miu, the opening track of Herlop’s new studio album Pripyat, was among the first songs that the young Catalan artist made on a computer, after two albums - 2016’s Nanook and 2018’s Babasha - that brought spectral elegance to the sound of piano and voice. This spirit of adventure continues into Pripyat, Herlop’s first full album produced on a computer, and her most intensely emotional work to date. 

Listening to Pripyat you can feel the emotional toil and creative endeavour that went into the record. Fans of Nanook and Babasha will recognise the combination of melancholic piano and elegant vocal lines that is found on Pripyat tracks like abans abans. But Pripyat has a far fuller, almost chaotic sound when compared to Herlop’s previous work, with the addition of electronic drums, electric bass lines and a wealth of sublime production effects. 

Added to this production expertise are songs of incredible grace and poise. Kaddisch is a spectral torch song rendered in emotional 3D by Herlop’s gorgeous voice; ubuntu has a feeling of deep longing and lingering sorrow; and shaolin mantis is like a pop song refracted through disorienting production effects and percussive vocal cut ups. Pripyat is the perfect combination of computer production trickery and intimate emotional release. 

Songs composed, produced and performed by Marina Herlop. 
Mix: James Ginzburg 
Mastering: Joker 
Mix and mastering of 'miu (choir version)': Borja Ruiz 
Ukulele and ending synth in 'shaolin mantis': Adri González 
Electric guitar in ‘lyssof’:Òscar Garrobé 
Electric bass in ‘ubuntu’ and ‘miu’: Òscar Garrobé

Marina Herlop - Pripyat (PAN 128)

Anne Imhof, Eliza Douglas, Billy Bultheel - Vivaldi (PAN 116)

Anne Imhof, Eliza Douglas, Billy Bultheel - Marlene (PAN 116)

Anne Imhof, Eliza Douglas, Billy Bultheel - Moshpit I (PAN 116)

Anne Imhof, Eliza Douglas, Billy Bultheel - Too Late (PAN 116)

Anne Imhof, Eliza Douglas, Billy Bultheel - Helmet Waltz (PAN 116)

Marina Herlop - miu
Label: PAN
Cat.No. PAN 128S
Format: DL
Release Date: 10 September 2021
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/miu
Video: https://bit.ly/3k1RoJD

Barcelona-based artist Marina Herlop joins PAN with a striking new single, titled "miu". The artist invites the listener to step into her otherworldly dreamscape and in turn go down a sonic rabbit hole into her garden of forking paths. Resisting attempts to interpret her work, Marina Herlop prefers to create open worlds which nourish and stimulate the imagination. Experimenting freely with konnakol syllables and carnatic rhythms harnessing the processed human voice and electronics, "miu" can be treated as a black box or cenobitic toy which the listener can project their desires and dreams onto.

Composed, produced and recorded by Marina Herlop
Electric bass: Òscar Garrobé, “Garru”
Mix: James Ginzburg, Marina Herlop
Master: Rashad Becker
Artwork by Robert Clark

@marinaherlop

Marina Herlop - miu (PAN128S)

Pan Daijing - Tissues 
Label: PAN
Cat.No. PAN 118
Format: 2xLP / DL
Release Date: 21 January 2022
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Tissues

Pan Daijing’s exhibition-performance Tissues premiered in the Tanks at the Tate Modern in autumn 2019. A five-part immersion in performance, sound, movement, space, and most of all emotion in its most distilled and conflicted states, Tissues engaged with the conventions of opera and tragedy to present a searing representation of the embattled human psyche in space and time. While the ambitious multi-sensory artwork made use of the range of Daijing’s artistic capabilities, music, particularly the voice, was at its formal and emotional core. The vinyl and digital release of Tissues on PAN serves as a record of that work, in the form of an hour-long, studio-recorded audio excerpt: an invaluable archival document from Daijing’s practice.  
 
Tissues is both a solitary work and a formal study in relation. Composed, directed, designed, written, and performed by Daijing (alongside a cast of twelve dancers and opera singers), the work—its libretto written in a mixture of old and modern Chinese—lingers inside a single human perspective. Daijing conjures states that are by turns delicate and severe, the tension between opposing modes animating the work as it unfolds. And yet, for all its interiority, Tissues foregrounds an intimate relationship with its audience through details like its engulfing visual landscape and its rattling, confrontational narrative arcs. Daijing uses the opera form as a prism through which to question the boundaries of music itself: perhaps, she proposes, music is much more than simply what is heard. It is in the relationship between voice and electronics that this limit is most clearly breached. Across the four parts gathered in this documentation, a counter-tenor, a soprano, a mezzo-soprano, and the artist herself voice a mixture of stunning laments and cries over an instrumental landscape, built out from industrial texture. Meant to be heard in a single listen, rather than track by track, the work unfolds through tender hollows and agitated peaks. At its crescendo, the operatic vocals melt away and the synthesizers themselves seem to howl with grief.
 
Daijing uncovers an essential, sometimes painful, music in all that surrounds us, inviting something like catharsis but also a greater understanding of the thing she and her cast conjure and draw close. A tissue, after all, is both a disposable object one uses to wipe away a tear, and the building block of our fleshy human forms. Daijing reaches and excavates the roiling core of what it is to be alive and full of feeling. 

Music from Tissues, an opera of five acts at Tate Modern, London on Oct 2nd, 4th and 5th, 2019
Composed, written, produced and directed by Pan Daijing. 

Performed by Anna Davidson, soprano ; Marie Gailey, mezzo soprano, Steve Katona, countertenor and Pan Daijing,  additional vocals.
The recording is mixed by James Ginzburg , Jan Urbiks and Pan Daijing, mastered by Rashad Becker. 

@pan-daijing

Tissues

Pan Dajing - Excerpt from Tissues Part Two "A Found Lament"(PAN 118)

E-Saggila / Exploited Body — Split
Format: 12"
Cat.No: PAN 125
Release Date: 25 November 2021
Purchase: https://p-a-n.bandcamp.com/merch/e-saggila-exploited-body-split

Fourth installment of PAN's split 12'' series, featuring Toronto-based producer E-Saggila (Northern Electronics, Hospital Productions) and Helsinki's experimentalist and Changeless label founder Exploited Body.

Limited to 300 copies, hand stamped, no repress.

The EP is mastered by Beau Thomas

B2 Exploited Body - Nothing Personal (PAN 125)

B1 Exploited Body - Alive, Expensive & Damaged (PAN 125)

A2 E-Saggila - 83C (PAN 125)

A1 E-Saggila - Cluebeat (PAN 125)

Marina Herlop - shaolin mantis
Label: PAN
Cat.No. PAN 128S2
Format: DL
Release Date: 28 March 2022
Purchase: https://pan.lnk.to/shaolinmantis

Second single from the upcoming debut album by Marina Herlop on PAN. Composed, produced and recorded by Marina Herlop. 

Ukulele and ending synth: Adri González
Mix: James Ginzburg, Marina Herlop
Master: Joker

Prypiat

Marina Herlop - shaolin mantis (PAN 128S2)

Marina Herlop - abans abans
Label: PAN
Cat.No. PAN 128S3
Format: DL
Release Date: 4 May 2022
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/abansabans

Third single from the upcoming debut album by Marina Herlop on PAN. Composed, produced and recorded by Marina Herlop.

Mix: James Ginzburg
Master: Joker

Marina Herlop - abans abans (PAN 128S3)

Marina Herlop - Pripyat
Label: PAN
Cat.No. PAN 128
Format: DL
Release Date: 20 May 2022
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Pripyat

Marina Herlop is often described as a pianist, a lingering remnant of her classical training. But what strikes the listener on Herlop’s breakout track miu is the intricate trickery of her voice, tracing rhythmical clusters around the subtlest of musical beds, in a technique inspired by Carnatic music of Southern India. 

miu, the opening track of Herlop’s new studio album Pripyat, was among the first songs that the young Catalan artist made on a computer, after two albums - 2016’s Nanook and 2018’s Babasha - that brought spectral elegance to the sound of piano and voice. This spirit of adventure continues into Pripyat, Herlop’s first full album produced on a computer, and her most intensely emotional work to date. 

Listening to Pripyat you can feel the emotional toil and creative endeavour that went into the record. Fans of Nanook and Babasha will recognise the combination of melancholic piano and elegant vocal lines that is found on Pripyat tracks like abans abans. But Pripyat has a far fuller, almost chaotic sound when compared to Herlop’s previous work, with the addition of electronic drums, electric bass lines and a wealth of sublime production effects. 

Added to this production expertise are songs of incredible grace and poise. Kadish is a spectral torch song rendered in emotional 3D by Herlop’s gorgeous voice; ubunto has a feeling of deep longing and lingering sorrow; and shaolin mantis is like a pop song refracted through disorienting production effects and percussive vocal cut ups. Pripyat is the perfect combination of computer production trickery and intimate emotional release. 

Songs composed, produced and performed by Marina Herlop. 
Mix: James Ginzburg 
Mastering: Joker 
Mix and mastering of 'miu (choir version)': Borja Ruiz 
Ukulele and ending synth in 'shaolin mantis': Adri González 
Electric guitar in ‘lyssof’:Òscar Garrobé 
Electric bass in ‘ubuntu’ and ‘miu’: Òscar Garrobé

miu (Choir Version)

Kaddisch

ubuntu

lyssof

shaolin mantis

abans abans

YVES TUMOR — Serpent Music
Format: LP / Digital
Cat.No: PAN 73
Release Date: 23 September 2016

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

The enigmatic Tennessee-raised, Turin-based Yves Tumor presents a poignant new album, recorded between Miami, Leipzig, Los Angeles and Berlin over the past three years. 

Evolved from a diverse and prolific creative history under an expansive plethora of covert aliases via various forward-thinking labels, 'Yves Tumor' emerges as his most personal and matured incarnation to date.

With involvement across various artistic outlets expanding to fashion such as a visceral live performance for LA's Hood By Air earlier this year, the global artist has built a distinctly bold personal aesthetic both musically and visually as a performer.

Painstakingly written from pieces developed upon since 2013, the new record, titled 'Serpent Music', was initially composed as a soul record - based around delicate and emotive songwriting in various forms. It was a highly difficult project to undertake on both a creative and personal level, weaving thematic links through paranoia, social anxiety, and missing loved ones. "The songs come from a much more emotional and very vulnerable place... They're very close to me and I've been cautious of how I would eventually present them to the world." he explains. 

The album spans sonically diverse and richly-textured pieces, formed from live, organic instruments, samples and various field recordings. Dreamlike lo-fi psychedelia sits alongside broken electronic experimentations, ambient compositions between abrasive noise offer insight into a haunting otherworld. From melodic choral vocals and soaring synths, to screeching guitar riffs, dramatic spoken word samples and live drumming, 'Serpent Music' evidently moves through a strange and intriguing personal journey.

The album is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, featuring photography by Daniel Sannwald.

Serpent Music

Yves Tumor - Role In Creation (PAN 73)

Yves Tumor - Dajjal (PAN 73)

Yves Tumor - The Feeling When You Walk Away (PAN 73)

Yves Tumor - Devout (PAN 73)

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

1. Kareem Lotfy - Fr3sh (PAN 77)

2. Malibu - Held (PAN 77)

3. Yves Tumor - Limerence (PAN 77)

6. AYYA - Second Mistake (PAN 77)

15. Oli XL - Heretic (PAN 77)

Eartheater — IRISIRI 
Format: LP/CD/Digital
Cat.No: PAN 86
Release Date: 08 June 2018
Purchase: http://p-a-n.org/product/eartheater-irisiri-pan-86/
BC: https://alexdrewchin.bandcamp.com/album/irisiri

Eartheater (aka Queens based artist Alexandra Drewchin) distills foley-filled digital production, a three-octave vocal range, and classical composition into works suspended between obsessively detailed sonic tapestries and almost recklessly romantic and gestural electronica. A body of viscerally emotive live performance stands alongside her recorded output, realized by her fearless physical investment and gut-wrenching vocal sincerity.

IRISIRI, Eartheater's third full-length record, lays out a shifting network of abstract song craft, laced with sudden structural upheavals and collisions of mutated tropes from numerous sonic vocabularies. Modular synth staccato plucks hammer out in arrhythmic spirals over a carefully muzzled grid of pumping kicks - unleashed in unpredictable disruptions.  Technoid stabs mingle with crushed black metal. An icy OS reads poetry against a bed of granular synth swells.  Drewchin's sirening whistle-tone vocals drape over relentless harp arpeggios. Eartheater confounds expectations of structure and resolution before deciding to thread in a sugary melody that snaps us back into some conception, however hazy, of pop songwriting. Guest spots on  IRISIRI charge Drewchin's ideas with concordant energies, from the stark imagist poetry of Odwalla1221 on Inhale Baby, to the sheer lacerating force of Moor Mother's unflinching verse on MMXXX.

Drewchin's lyrics, strewn with flourishes of wordplay and symbolism, explore themes of her autodidactic experience - playing with the tutelage of the ‘pupil’ within the ‘iris' mirrored in the palindrome  IRISIRI. One motif appears as a song name,  C.L.I.T., which Drewchin breaks down into "Curiosity Liberates Infinite Truth." The acronym stands as a microcosm of the Eartheater project in its holistic combination of idiosyncratic spirituality and cheekiness, presented with an earnest confidence that some could consider confrontational. In spite of this lexicon’s maximal effect, it comes from a very personal place as she states, “curiosity has had to be the currency of my education". On OS In Vitro, she reminds us that "These tits are just a side-effect," and "You can't compute her," as if to acknowledge the clouding effect of sexuality and technology in the face of a higher self-significance. In the record’s accompanying video piece, Claustra,  she slides between "the owning of my loneliness" and "the end of the loaning of my onliness”, encapsulating images of self-purifying 
isolation and the rejection of artistic exploitation with the flip of two syllables. The transmuting landscape of IRISIRI is riddled with evocative poetry and evidence of Drewchin’s development as an artist since her debut in 2015.

Drewchin performs and collaborates with art duo and close friends FLUCT. In February 2017, she starred in Raul de Nieves and Colin Self’s opera The Fool at the Kitchen. In April 2017, featured on two tracks from Show Me The Body’s  Corpus I mixtape alongside  Denzel Curry  and Moor Mother. She’s currently composing work for the contemporary chamber orchestra,  Alarm Will Sound, that will debut in May 2018. Her new live set sees her accompanied by the concert harpist Marilu Donivan.

The release is mastered by Rashad Becker at D&M, featuring photography by Elise Gallant.

@alex-drewchin
http://www.eartheater.solar/
http://www.p-a-n.org/

IRISIRI

Eartheater — C.L.I.T. (PAN 86)

Amnesia Scanner - Another Life
Format: LP / CD / Digital
Cat.No. PAN 96
Release date: 7 September 2018
pre-order album: bit.ly/2JxE61G / bit.ly/2uxWLWx
Video: https://youtu.be/U8Kk3nD2Bh8 

'AS Too Wrong' is the third single revealed from Amnesia Scanner's debut album 'Another Life'. Built around a haunting vocal hook from Oracle it has been already lauded as one of the most infectious doombahton songs of this year. It continues to unveil the distilled vocal heavy sound that is at the center stage of the album.

@amnesia-scanner
http://p-a-n.org

Another Life

pre-order

Amnesia Scanner - AS Too Wrong (PAN 96)

Pelada - Movimiento Para Cambio
Format: LP / Digital
Cat.No: PAN 102
Release Date: 04 October 2019
Purchase: bit.ly/2N5ID0M / bit.ly/2yWc1yu

Movimiento Para Cambio, is the full-length and debut for PAN from Montreal based duo Pelada. Comprising of vocalist Chris Vargas and producer Tobias Rochman, they have gained international attention through the city’s underground warehouse rave scene.

An urgent, headstrong body of work, the LP uses the music as a mechanism for delivering ideas central to the group’s moral and political ethos. Vargas explores themes of power, identity, surveillance and environmental justice atop Rochman’s raw mix of rave synths, acid basslines, breakbeats and dembow rhythms.

While at times unpredictable, the album is unified in its fast and loose approach. A Mí Me Juzgan Por Ser Mujer (‘I Am Judged Because I’m a Woman’) is an anti-machista anthem, stylistically nodding to NY house. Though Vargas doesn’t identify as a woman themselves, they understand their experience as a woman in an imbalanced patriarchal society that excludes women, femmes and non-binary people. Habla Tu Verdad (‘Speak Your Truth’) emphasizes the need to overcome the stigma around discussing sexual harassment, offering courage and strength to those who may need it. Asegura (‘Secure’) deals with the unprecedented power of Big Data, which monetizes a surveillance based economy through its users' data and behaviours.
These themes are set to fierce unrelenting bpms, nods to gabber, and samples of a reality show where young men compete in a prison fitness contest. Caderona (‘big hips’), features a hardline perreo-tinged beat that carries Vargas’ vocals with refreshing ferocity. Inspired by a cumbia song, Caderona offers a counterpoint to the male gaze, acting as an opportunity to demand space. Aquí describes the reality of a global corporate domination, where capitalist insatiability meets government inaction as we sit on the precipice of a mass extinction of our own making.

Pelada hope to inspire critical self- reflexivity through engagement, building power, demanding space and action. Or as it is written in their liner notes: ‘ABRE TUS OJOS, LA BESTIA SE ALIMENTA DE LA EXPLOTACIÓN' which translates to ‘OPEN YOUR EYES, THE BEAST FEEDS ON EXPLOITATION’.

The album is mastered by Jeremy Cox, featuring artwork by Johannes Schnatmann & Bill Kouligas.

http://p-a-n.org

Movimiento Para Cambio

Pelada - Asegura (PAN 102)

Amnesia Scanner — AS Acá (feat. Lalita)
Format: DL
Cat.No. PAN 108S
Release Date: 19 November 2019
Purchase: https://bit.ly/352sY8t / https://bit.ly/2O9pN88
Video: https://bit.ly/34XnZWn

AS Acá is the first song to surface from a new collaboration between Amnesia Scanner and Peruvian musician and artist Lalita who has both written and performed the song’s Spanish-language vocals. 

More music from Amnesia Scanner and Lalita’s collaboration is forthcoming.

AS Acá is Amnesia Scanner’s first release since the critically acclaimed album Another Life released by PAN in September 2018. It marks the beginning of a new cycle of work to be released throughout 2019-2020.

The single is accompanied by artwork and a music video by Amnesia Scanner’s long-time collaborators PWR. The video features a performance by three Lalitas.

The release is mastered by Enyang Urbiks

@amnesia-scanner
http://p-a-n.org

Amnesia Scanner - AS Acá (feat. Lalita)(PAN 108S)

Amnesia Scanner — Tearless 
Format: LP / DL 
Cat.No. PAN 108
Release Date: 19 June 2020 
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Tearless 
Video: https://youtu.be/N8mT3-YvmxE

Berlin-based duo Amnesia Scanner have announced the impending release of their sophomore LP, Tearless, a sonic reflection of how it feels to experience Earth at a time when collapse is emerging as the prevailing narrative. As Amnesia Scanner founders, Ville Haimala and Martti Kalliala watch their icy home country of Finland thaw- the staggering scale of political recalibration and the worldwide climate crisis blows open old norms. “There’s a looming sense of radical change,” they noted pre-COVID, connecting the period of making the album to a fin de siecle horror and curiosity regarding what new world is being ushered in. Tearless has been referred to as “a breakup album with the planet”, to which Amnesia Scanner responds, on the LP’s closing track: “You will be fine, if we can help you lose your mind.” Amnesia Scanner are previewing the album in the form of a video for their accidental quarantine anthem “AS Going,” a clip featuring a cascade of images of spiraling humans.

Tearless marks a turning point in the duo’s trajectory, one begun in 2014 with the AS Live [][][][][] mixtape, followed by audio play Angels Rig Hook, two EP’s for Young Turks, and their 2018 debut album, Another Life (PAN). For Amnesia Scanner in 2020, the walls of the nightclubs, galleries, and institutions fall away and are replaced by full-scale theatrical productions complete with jumbotron stages, animatronics, and a surrealist costumed cast (literally so in the XL version of the album’s live show, Anesthesia Scammer). Likewise, the musical scope of the album is expansive, with guest vocalists — the Peruvian artist Lalita and the Brazillian DJ/producer LYZZA — descending into a vast uncanny valley of sound. With the crossfader on Tearless sitting closer to pop than abstraction, so too does the audience for this record widen in scope. Opener “AS Enter” sets a sombre tone until the fucking riffs of the second track (the titular, Lalita-helmed “AS Tearless”) make clear there’s plenty of roaring to come. A feature from metalcore band Code Orange on “AS Flat” follows, along with “AS Trouble” (feat. Oracle, the third, machinic ghost-member of Amnesia Scanner) and together they hit as black-metal-gaze dirges. Closing Tearless is the sadboy grunge of “AS U Will Be Fine” with a clear statement of intent: doom, despair, insanity, absurdity, it’s all natural, all cathartic, and all OK.

For the art direction of this release, Amnesia Scanner collaborators PWR scavenged the pop cultural unconscious, as if ventilating memory dissociated by trauma. The gatefold vinyl reveals a four-panel comic, full of iconic pre-millennial motifs, which arrive cut up and reassembled collage-style: fitting visuals for an album that channels Deftones as much as reggaeton, menace as much as the drop-outness of grunge. Refuse like the ‘90s and party like the ‘20s—if that seems senseless, you are doing it right. 

The album is mastered by Enyang Urbiks, featuring visual direction from PWR Studio.

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

Tearless 

Amnesia Scanner - AS Going (feat. LYZZA)(PAN 108)

Eartheater - Below the Clavicle
Format: DL
Cat.No. PAN 112S
Release Date: 5 May 2020 
Purchase/stream: pan.lnk.to/Clavicle
@alex-drewchin

Eartheater unveils a new single, “Below The Clavicle.” It is her first release for PAN since her 2018 album IRISIRI.

Eartheater shares the following about the track: “I wrote ‘Below the Clavicle’ when I was waiting to understand more about a situation before talking about it — when the meaning was still below the clavicle and hadn’t made it up to my head yet. The understanding was still underground — forging in my heart and gut. In my upcoming album, I thought a lot about lava and volcanoes and the formation of stone and mountains.”

Written and arranged by Eartheater
Produced by Eartheater
Guitar performed by Eartheater
Harp performed by Marilu Donovan
Chamber arrangements performed by the Ensemble de Cámara CSMA:
Cello - Laura Sorribas
Violin I - Belén Pérez
Violin II - Celia Álvarez
Flute I - María del Barrio
Flute II - Ana Navarro
Recorded by Eartheater and Santiago Latorre at Etopia in Zaragoza Spain
Mixed by Kiri Stensby
Mastered by Heba Kadry
Art Direction by Eartheater and Daniel Sannwald
Photography by Daniel Sannwald
Special Thanks to FUGA

Eartheater - Below The Clavicle (PAN 112)

Amnesia Scanner — Tearless
Format: LP / DL
Cat.No. PAN 108
Release Date: 19 June 2020
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Tearless

Berlin-based duo Amnesia Scanner have announced the impending release of their sophomore LP, Tearless, a sonic reflection of how it feels to experience Earth at a time when collapse is emerging as the prevailing narrative. As Amnesia Scanner founders, Ville Haimala and Martti Kalliala watch their icy home country of Finland thaw- the staggering scale of political recalibration and the worldwide climate crisis blows open old norms. “There’s a looming sense of radical change,” they noted pre-COVID, connecting the period of making the album to a fin de siecle horror and curiosity regarding what new world is being ushered in. Tearless has been referred to as “a breakup album with the planet”, to which Amnesia Scanner responds, on the LP’s closing track: “You will be fine, if we can help you lose your mind.” Amnesia Scanner are previewing the album in the form of a video for their accidental quarantine anthem “AS Going,” a clip featuring a cascade of images of spiraling humans.

Tearless marks a turning point in the duo’s trajectory, one begun in 2014 with the AS Live [][][][][] mixtape, followed by audio play Angels Rig Hook, two EP’s for Young Turks, and their 2018 debut album, Another Life (PAN). For Amnesia Scanner in 2020, the walls of the nightclubs, galleries, and institutions fall away and are replaced by full-scale theatrical productions complete with jumbotron stages, animatronics, and a surrealist costumed cast (literally so in the XL version of the album’s live show, Anesthesia Scammer). Likewise, the musical scope of the album is expansive, with guest vocalists — the Peruvian artist Lalita and the Brazillian DJ/producer LYZZA — descending into a vast uncanny valley of sound. With the crossfader on Tearless sitting closer to pop than abstraction, so too does the audience for this record widen in scope. Opener “AS Enter” sets a sombre tone until the fucking riffs of the second track (the titular, Lalita-helmed “AS Tearless”) make clear there’s plenty of roaring to come. A feature from metalcore band Code Orange on “AS Flat” follows, along with “AS Trouble” (feat. Oracle, the third, machinic ghost-member of Amnesia Scanner) and together they hit as black-metal-gaze dirges. Closing Tearless is the sadboy grunge of “AS U Will Be Fine” with a clear statement of intent: doom, despair, insanity, absurdity, it’s all natural, all cathartic, and all OK.

For the art direction of this release, Amnesia Scanner collaborators PWR scavenged the pop cultural unconscious, as if ventilating memory dissociated by trauma. The gatefold vinyl reveals a four-panel comic, full of iconic pre-millennial motifs, which arrive cut up and reassembled collage-style: fitting visuals for an album that channels Deftones as much as reggaeton, menace as much as the drop-outness of grunge. Refuse like the ‘90s and party like the ‘20s—if that seems senseless, you are doing it right.

The album is mastered by Enyang Urbiks, featuring visual direction from PWR Studio.

@amnesia-scanner
https://p-a-n.org/

Amnesia Scanner - AS Tearless (feat. Lalita) (PAN 108)

Eartheater - Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin
Format: LP / DL
Cat.No. PAN 112
Release Date: 2 October 2020
Purchase/stream: pan.lnk.to/Phoenix

Composed, produced, and arranged by Eartheater alone, Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin draws a path back to the primordial lava lake from which she first emerged, as it also testifies to the reincarnating resurrections the project has undergone over its first full decade of existence. While the album renews her focus on guitar performance and legible structure, Eartheater balances the unabashed prettiness of acoustic harmonic songs with the dissonant gestural embroidery of oblique instrumentals. Having fallen back in love with the idioms that first captivated her, she worked to crack open the techniques that had fossilized inside of her, while still seeking to apply the electro-alchemical knowledge she picked up along her journey. The result of a laborious revival in fire, Phoenix recontextualizes Eartheater’s combinatorial approach to production within her most confident abstractions, adjacent to some of her most direct songs to date.

Eartheater composed and workshopped most of Phoenix over a ten-week artist residency (FUGA) in Zaragoza, Spain, housed in a sprawling, cubic glass facility that looked out over wildflower-flecked mountains. Following an intensive period of recording and touring, the residency provided her with an unprecedented period of solitude in the small Spanish town. Her newfound sense of isolation ultimately became liberating, leading her to sidestep the crutches and steady grids inherent to electronic music, and to conceive pieces rooted in her guitar and her desire to perform with other players live. Eartheater’s voice glows brighter than ever at the center of Phoenix’s arrangements — her familiar operatic highs are grounded by newly expanded velvety lows, leaping lucidly up and down octaves. Her intricate guitar work flits across baroque fingerpicked passages and latches into cyclical figures that meet her voice in lush harmonic progressions. From her own guitar parts, to the orchestral string arrangements she wrote for the Spanish conservatory group Ensemble de Camara, to the harp and violin lines performed by her close friends and collaborators Marilu Donovan and Adam Markiewicz of LEYA, Eartheater’s applications of acoustic instruments bring an extraordinary emotional emphasis to her compositions. Phoenix prepares for a future where electronic sound — or even electricity itself — isn’t guaranteed, but where her music could still come to life with a group of hands dexterously winding across instruments against the light of the fire.

Eartheater drew inspiration for Phoenix from geological imagery, whose turbulence and potential for genesis mirror the trajectory of her own life and relationships. The album’s instrumental pieces directly reference these moments of upheaval, colliding audio of volcano and lightning storms with resplendent string and vocal arrangements. “Volcano” looks out over the album from its peak at the center, its tectonic plates colliding in towering melodies and layers of vocal harmonies, as piano accents crest and cascade down the mountainside. When Eartheater sings, “I’m still building mountains underground,” she is trying to reconcile the pinnacles of her ambition with the comforts of a simple existence buried beneath the surface. “Diamond in the Bedrock” finds her admiring the gemstone forming under intense pressure inside her, but rejecting the romantic promise that the diamond signifies, choosing instead to escape a relationship that has come to stifle her.

Read full press release: https://bit.ly/2XtJGvQ

Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin

Eartheater - How To Fight (PAN 112)

Eartheater - Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin
Format: LP / DL
Cat.No. PAN 112
Release Date: 2 October 2020
Purchase/stream: pan.lnk.to/Phoenix

Composed, produced, and arranged by Eartheater alone, Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin draws a path back to the primordial lava lake from which she first emerged, as it also testifies to the reincarnating resurrections the project has undergone over its first full decade of existence. While the album renews her focus on guitar performance and legible structure, Eartheater balances the unabashed prettiness of acoustic harmonic songs with the dissonant gestural embroidery of oblique instrumentals. Having fallen back in love with the idioms that first captivated her, she worked to crack open the techniques that had fossilized inside of her, while still seeking to apply the electro-alchemical knowledge she picked up along her journey. The result of a laborious revival in fire, Phoenix recontextualizes Eartheater’s combinatorial approach to production within her most confident abstractions, adjacent to some of her most direct songs to date.

Eartheater composed and workshopped most of Phoenix over a ten-week artist residency (FUGA) in Zaragoza, Spain, housed in a sprawling, cubic glass facility that looked out over wildflower-flecked mountains. Following an intensive period of recording and touring, the residency provided her with an unprecedented period of solitude in the small Spanish town. Her newfound sense of isolation ultimately became liberating, leading her to sidestep the crutches and steady grids inherent to electronic music, and to conceive pieces rooted in her guitar and her desire to perform with other players live. Eartheater’s voice glows brighter than ever at the center of Phoenix’s arrangements — her familiar operatic highs are grounded by newly expanded velvety lows, leaping lucidly up and down octaves. Her intricate guitar work flits across baroque fingerpicked passages and latches into cyclical figures that meet her voice in lush harmonic progressions. From her own guitar parts, to the orchestral string arrangements she wrote for the Spanish conservatory group Ensemble de Camara, to the harp and violin lines performed by her close friends and collaborators Marilu Donovan and Adam Markiewicz of LEYA, Eartheater’s applications of acoustic instruments bring an extraordinary emotional emphasis to her compositions. Phoenix prepares for a future where electronic sound — or even electricity itself — isn’t guaranteed, but where her music could still come to life with a group of hands dexterously winding across instruments against the light of the fire.

Eartheater drew inspiration for Phoenix from geological imagery, whose turbulence and potential for genesis mirror the trajectory of her own life and relationships. The album’s instrumental pieces directly reference these moments of upheaval, colliding audio of volcano and lightning storms with resplendent string and vocal arrangements. “Volcano” looks out over the album from its peak at the center, its tectonic plates colliding in towering melodies and layers of vocal harmonies, as piano accents crest and cascade down the mountainside. When Eartheater sings, “I’m still building mountains underground,” she is trying to reconcile the pinnacles of her ambition with the comforts of a simple existence buried beneath the surface. “Diamond in the Bedrock” finds her admiring the gemstone forming under intense pressure inside her, but rejecting the romantic promise that the diamond signifies, choosing instead to escape a relationship that has come to stifle her.

Read full press release: bit.ly/2XtJGvQ

Eartheater - Volcano (PAN 112)

Eartheater - Faith Consuming Hope (PAN 112)

Label based in Berlin, est. 2008. http://www.p-a-n.org

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