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)

Concealer

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

shaolin mantis

abans abans

The Distance Between Heart And Mouth

Archeological Longing

Locust ― No-One In The World (Morning Light Mix) (6:38)

http://www.discogs.com/master/23535


Locust ― No-One In The World (Morning Light Mix) (6:38)

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