Bill Kouligas is the mind behind one of modern electronic music's greatest and most innovative labels, PAN. His remarkable ear for music meant that he released some of the earliest records from luminaries like Yves Tumor, Helena Hauff and Eartheater, helping to jumpstart several remarkable careers. And each PAN release is lovingly and lavishly packaged like an art object in itself, an approach you can read more about in this month's feature-length cover story.

The Berlin artist's RA Podcast is an audio companion to that cover story, and it underlines not only Kouligas's range as a label A&R but also as a DJ. Reflecting the label's evolution from straight-up noise to musique concréte to leftfield dance music and then avant-pop, the mix cycles through stages of strange, staggered beats, almost celestial ambient music, passages of overwhelming noise and sound that sublimate into floating clouds before solidifying back into club music, and a couple engaging spoken word passages and endless manipulations of the human voice. In other words, it sounds a lot like PAN.

@pan_hq

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/880

RA podcast

RA.880 Bill Kouligas

'C-Section' LP, 2010 (PAN 9)
All sounds by John Wiese & Evan Parker.
http://p-a-n.org/shop/

John Wiese / Evan Parker — C-Section (PAN 9)

Carrier Bag Music is a new series of sonic fictions inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. Reimagining the mixtape as container, medicine bundle and chronometer telling the time on another world, artists and producers explore Le Guin's articulations of holding, gathering and caring. With Laurel Halo, Elysia Crampton, Jenna Sutela and Victoria Sin.

Week Two: Elysia Crampton Chuquimia
 
“A medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.” — Ursula K. Le Guin
 
For the second episode of Carrier Bag Music, Elysia Crampton Chuquimia responds to the concept, image and process of the medicine bundle — a collection of sacred items with spiritual significance, held in a special carrier, in Indigenous American cultures. Spanning over seventeen years of the artist's life, this episode comprises original music and edits by the artist and includes the premiere of a previously unreleased track ‘Stars Over Riparian Corridor’ and features music released under the artist's Jaqi name, Chuquimamani-Condori — the name given to her as a form of honour and recognition from the elders of her nation.
 
Elysia Crampton Chuquimia is an American artist and musician belonging to the Pakajaqi Aymara nation. Her eclectic music is the flashpoint of myriad influences opening upon the complexity of Aymara becoming. Underscored by radical and queer politics and touching upon themes of science fiction, faith and ontology, Crampton’s experimental work gives sonorous form to contemporary expressions of Aymara resistance and survival: a project of 'becoming-with', in the shades given this term by Donna Haraway via prison abolitionist Che Gossett. 
 
“Although it’s possible to contextualise Crampton’s work among that of her contemporaries, hers is a truly singular style…she’s able to synthesize numerous musical forms, crashing timbres, dense percussion, mauled samples, pretty synth lines, club music structures dismantled from within, and much more, into bold music rich with purpose and feeling.” — The Wire
 
Curated by Ignota in partnership with Camden Art Centre and Haus Kulturen der Welt.

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction is published by Ignota with an Introduction by Donna Haraway and Images by Lee Bul https://ignota.org/products/the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction

Carrier Bag Music: Elysia Crampton

Carrier Bag Music is a new series of sonic fictions inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. Reimagining the mixtape as container, medicine bundle and chronometer telling the time on another world, artists and producers explore Le Guin's articulations of holding, gathering and caring. With Laurel Halo, Elysia Crampton, Jenna Sutela and Victoria Sin.

Week Three: Jenna Sutela
 
The third episode of Carrier Bag Music by Jenna Sutela is a mixed bag of sounds and music by humans and non-humans. A proposal for interspecies symbiosis, this otherworldly mix gathers collaborators including slime mould, space bacteria, artificial intelligence and yeast cells.
 
“Mine is a mixed bag, containing original material from Many-Headed Reading (2016), Nam-Gut (the microbial breakdown of language) (2017), Holobiont (2018), nimiia seance (2019) and nnother (2020), with Elvia Wilk, as well as some music from my desktop: Most Holy Redeemer by Ocarina Orchestra; Guts theme from Berserk by Susumu Hirasawa; Oração (Pense & Dance) by Lechuga Zafiro Ft. Linn da Quebrada; Finnish lullaby Nuku Nuku; Amniotic Life by Tomoko Sauvage; Exit by Bendik Giske; and Arca from @@@@@. Voices by Jessica Edwards, Clara Jo, Emily Jones, Ming Lin, Colin Self, and yeast cells sonified by Jim Gimzewski at 22, 26 and 30 Celsius.” — Jenna Sutela
 
“Go on, say I, wandering off towards the wild oats, with Oo Oo in the sling and little Oom carrying the basket.” — Ursula K. Le Guin
 
“I evolved as a vessel for others to proliferate. Bacteria, babies. Germs, parasites. Both organic and synthetic. Love and want. Not merely eye to eye, but eye to mouth, mouth to ear.” — Jenna Sutela and Elvia Wilk: nnother, 2020
 
Jenna Sutela works with words, sounds, and other living media, such as Bacillus subtilis nattō bacteria and the “many-headed” slime mold Physarum polycephalum. Her audiovisual pieces, sculptures, and performances seek to identify and react to precarious social and material moments, often in relation to technology. Sutela's work has been presented at museums and art contexts internationally, including Guggenheim Bilbao, Moderna Museet, and Serpentine Galleries. She is a Visiting Artist at The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) in 2019-20.

Curated by Ignota in partnership with Camden Art Centre and Haus Kulturen der Welt. Carrier Bag Music is part of Carrier Bag Fictions, a project by HKW and Ignota.

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction is published by Ignota with an Introduction by Donna Haraway and Images by Lee Bul https://ignota.org/blogs/news/carrier-bag-music

Carrier Bag Music: Jenna Sutela

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