Patrick Belaga - Blutt
Format: LP / DL
Cat.No. PAN 117
Release Date: 2 April 2021
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Blutt

Conceived at the heel of Italy’s boot-shaped peninsula in Apulia, Patrick Belaga’s Blutt makes music for the unruly imagination. The title is an old German word for ‘naked’, ‘bare’, but it can also mean ‘blood’ when spelt blut. Take away another letter and it makes ‘butt’. None of these definitions and adaptations were what prompted the classically-trained composer and cellist to name his second album with a word simulating the sound of a punctured artery. That came later.

Blutt’s nine woozy compositions are inspired by a contemplative road trip with a friend, and the mysterious muffled music heard from an unidentified source. It was a combination of jazz and classical music that haunted Belaga’s wanderings through the Byzantine town Gallipoli, and soon infected his dreams of long-gone civilizations. This record is its outcome, where organic instrumentals and electronic production merge into a sound that’s both contemporary and ancient. Samples of mewing incantations and tape hiss sway atop the waltzing thud of piano chords on “Sigh”. Composite layers of Belaga’s cello play in downcast harmony on “Rust”. There’s a wistful sense for the romantic, in the eerie rhythm of a piece like “Momentum”. The quarter tones of an Eastern European and Middle Eastern folk scale probe a profound melancholy via Kai Knight’s violin. Its notes are haunted by a field recording of running water on “Unsoft”, echoes of panpipes and a Jew’s harp on opener “Lilt”.

As a consummate composer and performer known for his work with artists Wu Tsang, boychild, Josh Johnson and Asma Maroof, Belaga’s Blutt is itself marked by flawless collaborations. Vocalist and instrumentalist Jazmin Romero sings and composes the surreal melodies of “Grey Eye”. Multidisciplinary dance artist and producer Riley Watts contributes to the muted, motorik movement of “The Tunnel is a Tower”. Together, the record plays as a stunning soundtrack to the strangeness of sleeping, and the heartbreaking transience of time. Like an intense dream half-remembered, the emotions persist after waking but for the sharp machinations just outside of the mind’s reach.
credits

The album is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring artwork by Giovanni Furlino and design by Bill Kouligas & NMR.

@patrickbelaga

Patrick Belaga - Blutt (PAN 117)

Ziúr - Antifate
Format: LP / DL
Cat.No. PAN 120
Release Date: 7 May 2021
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Antifate

Ziúr’s music has always been difficult to classify. A longtime fixture in Berlin’s nightlife, the musician, producer and DJ has cut through decades of threads to arrive on a sound that accurately represents her journey. She’s sung, played guitar and drums and reduced club music to a burning cinder; with “Antifate”, her third album under the Ziúr moniker, she approaches electronic music without any preciousness or reverence to genre.
2019’s acclaimed “ATØ” re-introduced songs to her canon, contorting her vocals over an undulating electronic backdrop. On “Antifate”, she takes this idea further, pushing abstracted pop forms into mists of digital euphoria and extracting unexpected instrumental flourishes from collapsing clouds of distorted rhythm. Electronic instrumentation is melted into acoustic sounds and vice-versa, creating a breathing organic universe that’s entirely Ziúr’s.

“Antifate” is an abstract reference to the mythical land of Cockaigne, a utopia where wine flows freely and houses are made of cake, that provided escapist fantasy for medieval peasants. As the space between our private worlds widens, this fantasy becomes alluring once more - a place where we feel free, with the people who allow us that freedom. With this in mind, Ziúr crafts a soundtrack that’s fantastical and magical, hinged on the idea of closeness and connection at a time when distance is mandatory.

Ghostly voices echo wordlessly over clattering beats and dubwise bass on opener ‘Alive, Unless?’, while the album’s title track sings a more epic fanfare, with a chorus of voices echoing into glittering synthesizer pearls and volcanic kicks. “Antifate” is almost even theatrical at times, something never more evident than on the Talk Talk-esque ‘Fringe Casual’ with its dreamy piano and plucked bass and on closing track ‘The Carry’, where flute is introduced into Ziúr’s rapidly expanding narrative.

It’s tempting to say that this is the album Ziúr has been destined to make, but “Antifate” rejects this concept. Rather, this is the album that Ziúr needed to make now, surrounded by the people that have been able to offer her the place to do it. In mapping out her mythical paradise, Ziúr has produced an album that is deeply tender and inescapably human. It’s an album about freedom, and she has never sounded so free.
The album is mixed by James Ginzburg & mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring artwork by Stefan Fähler.

@ziurinhell

Ziúr - Antifate (PAN 120)

Pan Daijing - Jade 玉观音
Format: LP / DL
Cat.No. PAN 113
Release Date: 4 June 2021
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Jade

What if a song was not a culmination but a singe, an imprint, or a crater left in the wake of creative process? On her new record “Jade”, Pan Daijing composes at a different scale than that we’ve come to know. Since the release of her groundbreaking LP “Lack” in 2017, Daijing has expanded her operatic vision into a series of major commissioned exhibition-performances at institutions including the Tate Modern, Martin Gropius Bau, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Developed for full casts of opera singers and dancers, and reaching for an all-encompassing durational experience of intensity for both performer and audience, the development of these works was for Daijing as emotionally disarming as it was thrilling. In order to continue accessing her own limits, Daijing had to develop a place of sanctuary within her own practice.

Its nine tracks written and recorded over the last three years, “Jade” is the sound of solitary release and refuge, of creative self-sustenance. Written without the imperatives of direct address to performers or audience, “Jade” speaks inward, while inviting a kind of rhetorical listening. The artist draws on materials familiar from her previous work: namely, ascetic electronic textures that rumble and pierce, and voice bent in irreverent directions. In place of catharsis, however, her arrangements here linger in tension, extending curiosity towards the delicate void that nourishes extremes. They toy with the minor capacities of song: repetition, chant, observations that conclude without resolving.

“Jade” comes from a vulnerable place, tender as in an undressed wound caught in the midst of healing over. Vocals, mostly Daijing’s own, arrive as wordless sequences of notes soaring alongside a drone, or plain laughter, or in a few places spoken word. What is said or sung provides fragments of experience and reflection. In the process of piecing together these fragments, the listener is confronted with the tender parts of her own. “Solitude is like an immense lake you’re swimming through,” says Daijing of these songs. “Sometimes you dip your head in and sometimes you lift it above. On album centerpiece “Let,” she speaks to us over the sound of rippling water, returning between anxious scenes to a refrain: “I take my bath in the ocean.” We are not just consuming Daijing’s story; we are being invited to join her in the water.

The album is mixed and mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring artwork by Pan Daijing, cinematography by Dzhovani & design by NMR.

@pan-daijing

Pan Daijing - Jade 玉观音 (PAN 113)

V/A - Kikommando
Label: PAN / Hakuna Kulala
Cat.No. PAN 124 / HK029
Format: DL / Book
Release Date: 6 August 2021
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Kikommando
Video: bit.ly/3i2EgSg

A collective effort from a vital scene in Kampala, KIKOMMANDO takes its name from Ugandan street food of flat bread and beans. As a ‘food of soldiers’ offering maximum energy for minimum funds, the eponymous mixtape, video series and book project is an equally nourishing and ambitious proposition. It all began in the East African summer of 2018, during a two-month residency at the Nyege Nyege label and collective’s villa, in collaboration with their sublabel Hakuna Kulala. Producer and PAN artist Simone Trabucchi (aka STILL) opened the door to his temporary studio in the city and a crucial cross-cultural collaboration was born.

“The intention was to record as much as possible,” Trabucchi says about KIKOMMANDO’s musical showcase of eight Kampala-based artists, coming from the spectrum of musical influences, crossing trap, drill, cut ups, kuduro, electro, smooth jams—the list goes on. In creating a sonic space to support the expression of its featured singers, poets and emcees, the mixtape ties countless styles and flows into a single snapshot of a particular part of the Kampala music scene, at a particular point in time. The invective of rapper and street legend Blaq Bandana’s “Nkwaata” is laid over a spare and brooding ambient. Kampala Unit trumpet player and first-time singer, Florence, rolls a thick melodic texture through the organic clicks, knocks and atmospherics of “Bae Tasanze”. Jahcity’s unique lyricism combines a personal take on traditional music and soulful-reggae with a jerky, wobbly collection of drops and donks.

Meanwhile, Ecko Bazz applies his grimey vocals and rhythmic, introspective words to lead single ‘Ntabala (Rolex Riddim) at a particularly pertinent moment of self-reflection. “I was trying to listen to the voice inside myself and wanted to achieve a higher level of understanding of things, life,” he says about the themes that he felt inspired to explore with Trabucchi at the recording desk. The accompanying video, shot on a rooftop in the Kampala neighborhood of Ggaba, is one of a series of slick and high-definition films complementing each one of the KIKOMMANDO tracks. These also include contributions from Ugandan emcee and key Hakuna Kulala member Biga Yut, don dada of the GabaGaza gang Swordman Kitala (with Omutaba on percussion) and South Sudanese poet and singer Winnie Lado.

Also accompanying a ‘visual mixtape’ of moving images for each song on KIKOMMANDO is a recording diary of sorts, where Trabucchi compiles a vibrant collection of pictures, colours and textures reflecting the its heterogeneous sonic palette into a book. Together this multifaceted, interdisciplinary project showcases, what Lamin Fofana’s liner notes describe as, “amazing originality, complexity”, while “embracing dissonance”.

Trabucchi’s personal take on a kind of ‘digital dancehall’ defined the sound of his ground-breaking rumination on Italy’s colonial history on debut STILL album, I, in 2017. KIKOMMANDO is a different proposition entirely, where he finds new ways to complement the personality and skills of its contributors sprung from a constant stream of visitors arriving at the Nyege Nyege Villa’s makeshift studio. “It was a dialogue,” stresses Trabucchi, who has always preferred collaboration as a means to escape branded and stereotypical identities, while creating something new. “I created the musical platform to make the singers confident, and challenged them at the same time. Working together accelerates ideas and reveals that nothing is your invention alone. That’s why KIKOMMANDO is a mixtape to me, and not an album.”

The mixtape is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring artwork by NMR. Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 11 & 12 mixed by Ville Haimala. Tracks 5, 6 & 8 mixed by Lorenzo Dal Ri.

@hakunakulala

V/A - KIKOMMANDO (PAN 124 / HK 029)

Marina Herlop - abans abans
Label: PAN
Cat.No. PAN 128
Release Date: 20 May 2022
Purchase: 
https://pan.lnk.to/abansabans
https://pan.lnk.to/shaolinmantis
https://pan.lnk.to/miu

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.

Marina Herlop - Pripyat (PAN 128)

Ziúr - Antifate
Format: LP / DL 
Cat.No. PAN 120
Release Date: 7 May 2021
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Antifate

Ziúr’s music has always been difficult to classify. A longtime fixture in Berlin’s nightlife, the musician, producer and DJ has cut through decades of threads to arrive on a sound that accurately represents her journey. She’s sung, played guitar and drums and reduced club music to a burning cinder; with “Antifate”, her third album under the Ziúr moniker, she approaches electronic music without any preciousness or reverence to genre.
2019’s acclaimed “ATØ” re-introduced songs to her canon, contorting her vocals over an undulating electronic backdrop. On “Antifate”, she takes this idea further, pushing abstracted pop forms into mists of digital euphoria and extracting unexpected instrumental flourishes from collapsing clouds of distorted rhythm. Electronic instrumentation is melted into acoustic sounds and vice-versa, creating a breathing organic universe that’s entirely Ziúr’s.

“Antifate” is an abstract reference to the mythical land of Cockaigne, a utopia where wine flows freely and houses are made of cake, that provided escapist fantasy for medieval peasants. As the space between our private worlds widens, this fantasy becomes alluring once more - a place where we feel free, with the people who allow us that freedom. With this in mind, Ziúr crafts a soundtrack that’s fantastical and magical, hinged on the idea of closeness and connection at a time when distance is mandatory.

Ghostly voices echo wordlessly over clattering beats and dubwise bass on opener ‘Alive, Unless?’, while the album’s title track sings a more epic fanfare, with a chorus of voices echoing into glittering synthesizer pearls and volcanic kicks. “Antifate” is almost even theatrical at times, something never more evident than on the Talk Talk-esque ‘Fringe Casual’ with its dreamy piano and plucked bass and on closing track ‘The Carry’, where flute is introduced into Ziúr’s rapidly expanding narrative.

It’s tempting to say that this is the album Ziúr has been destined to make, but “Antifate” rejects this concept. Rather, this is the album that Ziúr needed to make now, surrounded by the people that have been able to offer her the place to do it. In mapping out her mythical paradise, Ziúr has produced an album that is deeply tender and inescapably human. It’s an album about freedom, and she has never sounded so free.
The album is mixed by James Ginzburg & mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring artwork by Stefan Fähler.

@ziurinhell

Antifate

Patrick Belaga - Blutt
Format: LP / DL
Cat.No. PAN 117
Release Date: 2 April 2021
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Blutt
Watch video: https://bit.ly/3rkeoDV

Conceived at the heel of Italy’s boot-shaped peninsula in Apulia, Patrick Belaga’s Blutt makes music for the unruly imagination. The title is an old German word for ‘naked’, ‘bare’, but it can also mean ‘blood’ when spelt blut. Take away another letter and it makes ‘butt’. None of these definitions and adaptations were what prompted the classically-trained composer and cellist to name his second album with a word simulating the sound of a punctured artery. That came later.

Blutt’s nine woozy compositions are inspired by a contemplative road trip with a friend, and the mysterious muffled music heard from an unidentified source. It was a combination of jazz and classical music that haunted Belaga’s wanderings through the Byzantine town Gallipoli, and soon infected his dreams of long-gone civilizations. This record is its outcome, where organic instrumentals and electronic production merge into a sound that’s both contemporary and ancient. Samples of mewing incantations and tape hiss sway atop the waltzing thud of piano chords on “Sigh”. Composite layers of Belaga’s cello play in downcast harmony on “Rust”. There’s a wistful sense for the romantic, in the eerie rhythm of a piece like “Momentum”. The quarter tones of an Eastern European and Middle Eastern folk scale probe a profound melancholy via Kai Knight’s violin. Its notes are haunted by a field recording of running water on “Unsoft”, echoes of panpipes and a Jew’s harp on opener “Lilt”.

As a consummate composer and performer known for his work with artists Wu Tsang, boychild, Josh Johnson and Asma Maroof, Belaga’s Blutt is itself marked by flawless collaborations. Vocalist and instrumentalist Jazmin Romero sings and composes the surreal melodies of “Grey Eye”. Multidisciplinary dance artist and producer Riley Watts contributes to the muted, motorik movement of “The Tunnel is a Tower”. Together, the record plays as a stunning soundtrack to the strangeness of sleeping, and the heartbreaking transience of time. Like an intense dream half-remembered, the emotions persist after waking but for the sharp machinations just outside of the mind’s reach.
credits

The album is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring artwork by Giovanni Forlino and design by Bill Kouligas & NMR.

@patrickbelaga

Blutt

Patrick Belaga - The Tunnel Is A Tower (w/ Riley Watts) (PAN 117)

Patrick Belaga - Blutt
Format: LP / DL
Cat.No. PAN 117
Release Date: 2 April 2021
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Blutt

Conceived at the heel of Italy’s boot-shaped peninsula in Apulia, Patrick Belaga’s Blutt makes music for the unruly imagination. The title is an old German word for ‘naked’, ‘bare’, but it can also mean ‘blood’ when spelt blut. Take away another letter and it makes ‘butt’. None of these definitions and adaptations were what prompted the classically-trained composer and cellist to name his second album with a word simulating the sound of a punctured artery. That came later.

Blutt’s nine woozy compositions are inspired by a contemplative road trip with a friend, and the mysterious muffled music heard from an unidentified source. It was a combination of jazz and classical music that haunted Belaga’s wanderings through the Byzantine town Gallipoli, and soon infected his dreams of long-gone civilizations. This record is its outcome, where organic instrumentals and electronic production merge into a sound that’s both contemporary and ancient. Samples of mewing incantations and tape hiss sway atop the waltzing thud of piano chords on “Sigh”. Composite layers of Belaga’s cello play in downcast harmony on “Rust”. There’s a wistful sense for the romantic, in the eerie rhythm of a piece like “Momentum”. The quarter tones of an Eastern European and Middle Eastern folk scale probe a profound melancholy via Kai Knight’s violin. Its notes are haunted by a field recording of running water on “Unsoft”, echoes of panpipes and a Jew’s harp on opener “Lilt”.

As a consummate composer and performer known for his work with artists Wu Tsang, boychild, Josh Johnson and Asma Maroof, Belaga’s Blutt is itself marked by flawless collaborations. Vocalist and instrumentalist Jazmin Romero sings and composes the surreal melodies of “Grey Eye”. Multidisciplinary dance artist and producer Riley Watts contributes to the muted, motorik movement of “The Tunnel is a Tower”. Together, the record plays as a stunning soundtrack to the strangeness of sleeping, and the heartbreaking transience of time. Like an intense dream half-remembered, the emotions persist after waking but for the sharp machinations just outside of the mind’s reach.
credits

The album is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring artwork by Giovanni Forlino and design by Bill Kouligas & NMR.

@patrickbelaga

Patrick Belaga -  Momentum (w/ Kai Kight) (PAN 117)

Patrick Belaga - Grey Eye (w/ Jazmin Romero) (PAN 117)

Patrick Belaga - Sigh (PAN 117)

Jade 玉观音

Pan Daijing - Dust 五月 (PAN 113)

Ziúr - Fringe Casual (PAN 120)

Ziúr - Gravity's Gravity, Clout Is Clout (PAN 120)

Ziúr - Orange Cream Drip (PAN 120)

Ziúr - Alive, Unless? (PAN 120)

Pan Daijing - Tilt 四月 (PAN 113)

Pan Daijing - Dictee 三月 (PAN 113)

Pan Daijing - The Goat 二月 (PAN 113)

Pan Daijing - Clean 一月 (PAN 113)

V/A - Kikommando
Label: PAN / Hakuna Kulala 
Cat.No. PAN 124 / HK029 
Format: DL / Book
Release Date: 6 August 2021
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Kikommando
Video: https://bit.ly/3i2EgSg

A collective effort from a vital scene in Kampala, KIKOMMANDO takes its name from Ugandan street food of flat bread and beans. As a ‘food of soldiers’ offering maximum energy for minimum funds, the eponymous mixtape, video series and book project is an equally nourishing and ambitious proposition. It all began in the East African summer of 2018, during a two-month residency at the Nyege Nyege label and collective’s villa, in collaboration with their sublabel Hakuna Kulala. Producer and PAN artist Simone Trabucchi (aka STILL) opened the door to his temporary studio in the city and a crucial cross-cultural collaboration was born.

“The intention was to record as much as possible,” Trabucchi says about KIKOMMANDO’s musical showcase of eight Kampala-based artists, coming from the spectrum of musical influences, crossing trap, drill, cut ups, kuduro, electro, smooth jams—the list goes on. In creating a sonic space to support the expression of its featured singers, poets and emcees, the mixtape ties countless styles and flows into a single snapshot of a particular part of the Kampala music scene, at a particular point in time. The invective of rapper and street legend Blaq Bandana’s “Nkwaata” is laid over a spare and brooding ambient. Kampala Unit trumpet player and first-time singer, Florence, rolls a thick melodic texture through the organic clicks, knocks and atmospherics of “Bae Tasanze”. Jahcity’s unique lyricism combines a personal take on traditional music and soulful-reggae with a jerky, wobbly collection of drops and donks.

Meanwhile, Ecko Bazz applies his grimey vocals and rhythmic, introspective words to lead single ‘Ntabala (Rolex Riddim) at a particularly pertinent moment of self-reflection. “I was trying to listen to the voice inside myself and wanted to achieve a higher level of understanding of things, life,” he says about the themes that he felt inspired to explore with Trabucchi at the recording desk. The accompanying video, shot on a rooftop in the Kampala neighborhood of Ggaba, is one of a series of slick and high-definition films complementing each one of the KIKOMMANDO tracks. These also include contributions from Ugandan emcee and key Hakuna Kulala member Biga Yut, don dada of the GabaGaza gang Swordman Kitala (with Omutaba on percussion) and South Sudanese poet and singer Winnie Lado.

Also accompanying a ‘visual mixtape’ of moving images for each song on KIKOMMANDO is a recording diary of sorts, where Trabucchi compiles a vibrant collection of pictures, colours and textures reflecting the its heterogeneous sonic palette into a book. Together this multifaceted, interdisciplinary project showcases, what Lamin Fofana’s liner notes describe as, “amazing originality, complexity”, while “embracing dissonance”.

Trabucchi’s personal take on a kind of ‘digital dancehall’ defined the sound of his ground-breaking rumination on Italy’s colonial history on debut STILL album, I, in 2017. KIKOMMANDO is a different proposition entirely, where he finds new ways to complement the personality and skills of its contributors sprung from a constant stream of visitors arriving at the Nyege Nyege Villa’s makeshift studio. “It was a dialogue,” stresses Trabucchi, who has always preferred collaboration as a means to escape branded and stereotypical identities, while creating something new. “I created the musical platform to make the singers confident, and challenged them at the same time. Working together accelerates ideas and reveals that nothing is your invention alone. That’s why KIKOMMANDO is a mixtape to me, and not an album.”

The mixtape is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring artwork by NMR. Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 11 & 12 mixed by Ville Haimala. Tracks 5, 6 & 8 mixed by Lorenzo Dal Ri.

@hakunakulala

KIKOMMANDO

STILL, ECKO BAZZ - Ntabala (Rolex Riddim) (PAN 124 / HK029)

STILL, Blaq Bandana - Nkwaata (PAN 124 / HK029)

STILL, Swordman Kitala - Rollacosta feat. Omutaba (PAN 124 / HK029)

STILL, Biga Yut, Florence - Ntwala (PAN 124 / HK029)

STILL, Biga Yut - Tukoona Nalo (PAN 124 / HK029)

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)

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)

Venera - Asteroxylon
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 153S2
Release Date: 21 August 2025
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Asteroxylon

Venera shares ‘Asteroxylon’, the second single of the upcoming album ‘Exinfinite’ out via PAN on September 12th, 2025.

Having defined a multi-dimensional sonic universe on their acclaimed eponymous debut album, composer/filmmaker Chris Hunt and Korn’s James “Munky” Shaffer abandon the familiar and drift towards a kingdom of recursion on EXINFINITE, staring down a tangled mass of mirrored wormholes that hum with eldritch ambiguity. They launch squelchy, decelerated techno into occult noise reflecting pools on the slithering ‘Asteroxylon’.

Recorded in Downtown Los Angeles, CA and Atlanta, GA
Mixed by Chris Pawlusek in London, UK
Mastered by Matt Colton at Metropolis, London, UK
Art by EFFIXX with Samanta García

Venera - Asteroxylon (PAN 153S2)

Venera - Exinfinite
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 153
Release Date: 12 September 2025
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Exinfinite

Having defined a multi-dimensional sonic universe on their acclaimed eponymous debut album, composer/filmmaker Chris Hunt and Korn's James "Munky" Shaffer abandon the familiar and drift towards a kingdom of recursion on EXINFINITE, staring down a tangled mass of mirrored wormholes that hum with eldritch ambiguity. VENERA's sophomore full length is darker, heavier and more percussive than its predecessor, but there's something more intimate wired into its circuitry that's harder to define - something mystical, mysterious and melancholy. Songs materialize from the void only to be dissolved by acidic synths or pierced by Hunt's whetted beats, while Shaffer's dense, tortured riffs are offset by euphoric, time-dilated vocals from FKA twigs, Dis Fig and Chelsea Wolfe. Following their encounter with vastness, VENERA have peered inward, ruminating on the limits of existence and excavating their most deeply buried emotions.

VENERA emerged in 2022 when Hunt and Shaffer veered into their own musical territory after recording with Albanian artist Xhoana X. Improvising together and experimenting with cinematic, sci-fi-inspired sound design, the duo realized the collaboration had potential, so they began developing and evolving the sound further, bringing in assistance from former Mars Volta drummer Deantoni Parks, Queens of the Stone Age's Alain Johannes, post-punk duo VOWWS and LA noise rock legends HEALTH. And after their debut album appeared on Mike Patton's Ipecac imprint in 2023, VENERA kept deconstructing and rebuilding their approach to songwriting, swapping out ambient Eno-esque atmospheres for blown-
out beats and dense textures, and figuring out how to extend the narrative they'd opened up without retreading old ground.

On 'Tear', the duo's new direction can be heard clearly as Shaffer's primal guitar noises are reformed into eerie widescreen expositions that Hunt punctuates with pneumatic kick and snare cycles. Broken up by airlock hisses and luminous synths, the track proposes a backdrop that VENERA continuously transmute, reforging the concept as the album develops. Cult singer-songwriter Wolfe adds a gothic American flavor to the crepuscular 'All Midnights', crooning powerfully over VENERA's vacuum packed rhythms and gaseous synths, and Berlin-based noisemaker Dis Fig follows work with The Body and The Bug on 'End Uncovered' lending breathy, emotionally layered tones to Shaffer and Hunt's tape-damaged industrial pops and whirrs. They launch squelchy, decelerated techno into occult noise reflecting pools on the slithering 'Asteroxylon', and Hunt replies to Shaffer's reverberating plucks with foghorn groans on the ominous, pensive 'uuu773'.

'EXINFINITE' perpetually builds momentum until it hits 'Caroline', an intense collaboration with FKA twigs that isolates her most unearthly tones. Initially curling her words around ominous electrical distortions and mangled, ghostly voices, twigs launches into a charged operatic cry that Shaffer and Hunt meet with skittering cybernetic beats and dense walls of guitar noise. It's this track that fully cracks open VENERA's concept, merging the synthetic with the natural and prompting dysphoria, loss of self and infinite regress. So the blood-curdling noise and sinister ambiance of 'Decreation' acts like a dissociated coda. In the 'EXINFINITE', destruction and death are not overcome, they're intensified until they metamorphose completely.


Venera ft. FKA twigs - Caroline

Venera - meridians

Venera ft. Dis Fig - End Uncovered

Venera - Flatline

Venera ft. Chelsea Wolfe - All Midnights

Venera - uuu773

Venera - decreation

Merzbow, Iggor Cavalera, Eraldo Bernocchi - Nocturnal Rainforest
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 154
Release Date: 03 October 2025
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/NocturnalRainforest

The first collaboration between Japanese noise titan Masami Akita, aka Merzbow, iconic Brazilian drummer and producer Iggor Cavalera and forward-thinking Italian guitarist and sound designer Eraldo Bernocchi, 'Nocturnal Rainforest' terraforms a sonic landscape that's almost overpoweringly dense and disorienting, but never aggressive or chaotic. It's a fully immersive experience that re-contextualizes the trio's years of work in extreme experimental music by concentrating on texture, atmosphere and sensory overload. The noise itself is used to provoke a refined level of focus; 'Nocturnal Rainforest' is mediative in its own way, enveloping listeners with waves of distortion, phantasmic unmetered rhythms and perplexing processed field recordings, but it's not intended for passive listening. Made using a fusion of bespoke techniques the trio have been developing for decades, it exists in a raw and mystifying liminal zone between the organic realm and the digital world - a place that's too hauntingly familiar to be ignored.

'Nocturnal Rainforest' is a product of each artist's ongoing musical evolution, powered by extreme music but tempered by deep listening techniques that expect presence rather than dissociation. On 'Swietnenia Macrophylla', evocative humid soundscapes provide a precarious sense of security at first, blurred at the edges by purring oscillations that mimic the jungle's fauna. And that peace is quickly ruptured by percussive, foghorn-like distortions that mark out the scale of the trio's vision. Not just raw noise, the rougher elements are cut with subtle waves of billowing ambience and muggy low- end drones before the track launches into a symphony of computerized stutters. There's a constant push and pull between organic and artificial sounds - before there's been time to acclimatize to the DAW corrupted noise, collaged tape saturations and slashed amplifier hum muddies the atmosphere, purposefully confusing the senses and obfuscating the sources.

And the thought is continued on 'Ceiba Pentandra' when the trio follow the jungle's teeming sonics with growling, whirring electronics and dense interference. What starts as birdsong and an choir of insects mutates into a wall of deafening, transcendent full-spectrum texture that cracks open like a slow-moving storm over a shadowy wilderness.

Merzbow, Iggor Cavalera, Eraldo Bernocchi - Swietenia Macrophylla

Merzbow, Iggor Cavalera, Eraldo Bernocchi - Ceiba Pentandra

Cyprien Gaillard - Retinal Rivalry
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 157
Release Date: 17 October 2025
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/RetinalRivalry

Retinal Rivalry is the soundtrack to Cyprien Gaillard’s new stereoscopic film, Retinal Rivalry (2024). It is an entrancing journey through Germany’s urban landscape and its layers of historical and social significance. Building on his previous exploration of the sculptural qualities of three-dimensional moving images, the work extends beyond the confines of the screen. By harnessing cutting-edge technology to its full potential, Gaillard offers an expanded, sharpened and deeply affecting novel view of the world around us.

Retinal Rivalry is named after the visual perception phenomenon that occurs when the brain receives two conflicting images at the same time. Instead of blending into one 3D image, the neural system alternates between prioritising one image while suppressing the other, causing confusion and discomfort for the viewer.

Gaillard’s film engages with these complexities of visual processing and the limitations of technology, collating visual information through exceptional, often tongue-in-cheek, shots that intertwine the inside and outside, the contained and dispersed, and the natural and built.

His camera adopts unusual viewpoints, shifting from smooth aerial perspectives to a rodent’s low gaze to the dizzying darting in and out on the bulbous nose of a sculpture, or a long shot of a train moving through a landscape, drawing us into a layered experience that teeters between a bad trip and unexpected beauty providing solace.

The film’s score draws from diverse sonic elements, bolstering its exploration of dissonance and synchrony. Indonesian instrumental music is reworked and combined with field recordings of heavy machinery rumbling and strangely melodic retching. The soundtrack also incorporates the opening lines to Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), along with its accompanying overture by German band Popol Vuh. 

The soundscape of Retinal Rivalry contrasts its images—what we see is often at odds with what we hear. Only one section lets sound and image converge: a fractured leg pumps the pedal of an interactive organ to play a piece by Johann Sebastian Bach that repeatedly falters.

The film Retinal Rivalry will be on view at Haus der Kunst in Munich from October 17, 2025, to March 8, 2026.

Cyprien Gaillard - Retinal Rivalry (PAN 157)

Patrick Belaga - Blutt 
Format: LP / DL
Cat.No. PAN 117
Release Date: 2 April 2021
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Blutt

Conceived at the heel of Italy’s boot-shaped peninsula in Apulia, Patrick Belaga’s Blutt makes music for the unruly imagination. The title is an old German word for ‘naked’, ‘bare’, but it can also mean ‘blood’ when spelt blut. Take away another letter and it makes ‘butt’. None of these definitions and adaptations were what prompted the classically-trained composer and cellist to name his second album with a word simulating the sound of a punctured artery. That came later.

Blutt’s nine woozy compositions are inspired by a contemplative road trip with a friend, and the mysterious muffled music heard from an unidentified source. It was a combination of jazz and classical music that haunted Belaga’s wanderings through the Byzantine town Gallipoli, and soon infected his dreams of long-gone civilizations. This record is its outcome, where organic instrumentals and electronic production merge into a sound that’s both contemporary and ancient. Samples of mewing incantations and tape hiss sway atop the waltzing thud of piano chords on “Sigh”. Composite layers of Belaga’s cello play in downcast harmony on “Rust”. There’s a wistful sense for the romantic, in the eerie rhythm of a piece like “Momentum”. The quarter tones of an Eastern European and Middle Eastern folk scale probe a profound melancholy via Kai Knight’s violin. Its notes are haunted by a field recording of running water on “Unsoft”, echoes of panpipes and a Jew’s harp on opener “Lilt”.

As a consummate composer and performer known for his work with artists Wu Tsang, boychild, Josh Johnson and Asma Maroof, Belaga’s Blutt is itself marked by flawless collaborations. Vocalist and instrumentalist Jazmin Romero sings and composes the surreal melodies of “Grey Eye”. Multidisciplinary dance artist and producer Riley Watts contributes to the muted, motorik movement of “The Tunnel is a Tower”. Together, the record plays as a stunning soundtrack to the strangeness of sleeping, and the heartbreaking transience of time. Like an intense dream half-remembered, the emotions persist after waking but for the sharp machinations just outside of the mind’s reach. 
credits

The album is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring artwork by Giovanni Forlino and design by Bill Kouligas & NMR. 

@patrickbelaga

Patrick Belaga - Lilt (w/ Kai Kight) (PAN 117)

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

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