★Pan
Superlative Fatigue
**Yellow vinyl edition pressed up in a run of 200 copies** Returning with his first album in 13 years, Errorsmith's Superlative Fatigue long-awaited release on PAN arrives as his perhaps most optimistic record yet. Placing a strong emphasis on spectral exploration, the tracks tell an inherent story and span a musical arc with his recognizable synthesized tones, computerized vocal effects, and timbral changes in motion. In comparison to his previous productions, Errorsmith (Erik Wiegand) see…
Hesaitix
Further departing from both the cinematic abstraction of Piteous Gate (PAN 066CD/LP, 2015) and the hectic drums of Damaged Merc (2016), Berlin producer M.E.S.H.'s new full-length, Hesaitix, is marked by its hyper-ornamented rhythms and a sense of pensive, moonlit spaces. The atmosphere has shifted; the radical deconstruction of previous releases has given way to subtler interventions, building new structures in strange territories. Shifting from the meditative to states of manic unease, Hes…
Lack
Beautifully by-passing our expectations, performance artist/musician Pan Daijing’s first major work Lack yields a spellbinding demonstration, or “purgative finale”, to her improvised live performances over the past two years; offering a far more nuanced and probing suite of electronic gestures than her gnarled handful of slamming, salty tapes and 12”s for Bedouin Records, Power Vacuum or Noisekölln Tapes since 2015. Extracted and edited from field recordings and live documentation of her concert…
Stack Music
Having felt restrained by the limits of traditional instruments and the techniques tied to them, composer, music producer, and artist Konrad Sprenger (b. Joerg Hiller), spent years developing various algorithms and custom instruments to realize his work. His recent focus has been on rhythmic patterns based on the Euclidean algorithm, using a computer-controlled multi-channel electric guitar. The unique system can create complex rhythmical patterns whilst tuning the strings during performan…
Traditional Music Of Notional Species Vol. II
Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. II pays a return visit to the otherworldly noumenal ecosystem inside Rashad Becker's head, relaying indecipherable messages in something resembling an expressive language of psychoacoustic, cuneiform glyphs. No Rosetta Stone is required to comprehend these deeply abstract auditory tableaus; all you need is an open mind and functioning set of lugs for reception, whilst whatever counts for your sense of consciousness will fill in the gaps, and that’s wher…
Olympic Mess
Double LP version. Pressed on 140-gram vinyl. Olympic Mess is Luke Younger's third outing for the ever-stunning PAN imprint, tailing closely behind last year's The Hollow Organ EP and the stupefying Impossible Symmetry album from the year before that. Where his previous effort, 2014's The Hollow Organ (PAN 050EP), dealt in dense, distressed sonics, Olympic Mess is Younger responding to a period spent engaged with loop-based industrial music, dub techno, and balearic disco. These musical refere…
Koch
Lee Gamble jacks directly into a latent stream of electronic wonder with his dream-like 'Koch' opus for PAN. Running to 76 minutes over 16 tracks, it's Gamble's most substantial and arguably definitive work, following the beautifully effective 'Diversions 1994-1996' and 'Dutch Tvashar Plumes' releases for PAN in 2012. Where those records deconstructed the elusive, enigmatic timbre of '90s electronic dance music - jungle, techno, ambient - 'Koch' (pron. 'Cotch' - UK slang for relax) is a sort of …
Clonic Earth
The experimental Italian composer, Valerio Tricoli, returns to PAN with a new album, Clonic Earth. His ongoing output for the label has long-presented his electroacoustic sound compositions which utilizes analog live sampling and real-time editing of field and studio recordings by manipulation of 1/4 inch tape. Asides from being a founding member of the Italian avant-rock group 3/4HadBeenEliminated, he has worked extensively with various musicians, choreographers and multimedia artists inclu…
B23 Steelhouse/Motor System (Extension)
Limited pressing white label 12" featuring two previously unreleased tracks by Lee Gamble. "B23 Steelhouse" is a rework of "Steelhouse Chaconne," itself an unreleased Lee Gamble dub from 2013. On the flip is "Motor System (Extension)," a track taken from 2014's Koch album (PAN 059CD/LP) and extended. Both tracks have been remastered and sound much louder and dynamic than the album cuts -- primed for the DJs. 140-gram 12" mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M.
Knerpen! (bevel)
Antwerp-based nonconformist Dennis Tyfus debuts on PAN under his Vom Grill moniker with the Knerpen! (bevel) LP. Tyfus's dealings in unstable media -- spanning paintings and illustrations, films, radio transmissions and more -- reflect the freeform, sometimes parodic nature of his sonic output, which has been archived on his own Ultra Eczema imprint alongside many outsider, weirdo, and noise underground artists. Knerpen! (bevel) is a jarring collage of skewed electronics, tape loops, and tr…
Safe
140-gram LP version. Having partnered with Bill Kouligas in 2015 to relaunch his Lost Codes imprint as Codes, Visionist takes a defining step forward with the release of his debut album, Safe. The South London artist born Louis Carnell broke during a period of experimentation in UK music when, with the disintegration of the dubstep scene, emerging producers began looking to juke and Chicago house for inspiration. A pair of EPs on Lit City Trax (and a collaboration with Fatima Al Qadiri) in 20…
Piteous Gate
Following his acclaimed 2014 Scythians EP (PAN 052EP), M.E.S.H. returns to PAN with his debut album, the opulent and dystopian Piteous Gate. Alongside fellow members of Berlin's Janus collective, behind nights at Berghain and Corsica Studios, M.E.S.H. is known for his futurist approach to club dynamics and production. On Piteous Gate, tightly gridded and sculpted sound juts up against loose-wristed improvisation, automated processes, and collage. Standard club syncopation is twisted by slidi…
Miseri Lares
*2015 small reprint* On his second solo album and debut full-length for PAN, Valerio Tricoli conjures an atmospheric tension that’s deeply unsettling. The horror and the precision he presents hang in the air, like a piercing scream behind soundproof doors that you can feel for hours after you’ve entered a now abandoned room. Miseri Lares' is Tricoli's 5th album, his first first solo LP in seven years. It's the culmination of tireless experimentation in studio and live arenas, presenting a de…
Protogravity EP
PAN presents the first collaborative single from electronic composers Mark Fell and Erik Wiegand, the latter appearing under his Errorsmith alias for the first time in eleven years. Both Fell and Wiegand have contributed hugely to the development of alternative dance forms and are no strangers to collaboration; Fell alongside DJ Sprinkles and as one half of SND, Wiegand as Smith N Hack together with Soundstream and more-frequently accompanying Fiedel as MMM. The seminal Errorsmith albums from th…
1
Lifted is a stellar new project sparked off by Matthew Papich (Co La) and Future Times overlord Max D for PAN. Realised and rendered together with Jordan GCZ and Gigi Masin, among others, their debut LP '1' is an elegant exercise in breaking free of the grid, consolidating a spectrum of congruent ideas and idiosyncratic styles with a beautifully communal spirit putting a contemporary spin on the freedoms of '70s jazz fusion. From initial studio sessions recorded by Matthew and Max in their…
Hecker Leckey Sound Voice Chimera
In 2010, acclaimed German sound experimentalist Florian Hecker and multidisciplinary artist Mark Leckey came together for the first time. Their combined Hecker Leckey Sound Voice Chimera -- a mutant configuration of two genetically discrete solo works -- was originally presented as part of a two-day performance event at the Tate Modern called Push and Pull, and is now presented on LP. In Hecker Leckey Sound Voice Chimera, Hecker decomposes, modulates, and re-synthesizes the vocal track from Le…
Ruff Kutz
Rawest, illest hip hop/dub mixtape from '98 by Wordsound capo, Skiz Fernando Jr a.k.a. Spectre, feat contributions from sometime Madteo collaborator Sensational, Kevin ‘The Bug’ Martin’s Techno Animal alias, Bill Laswell’s Dubadelic project, Godflesh’s Ted Parsons and more. This is a fine history lesson for many yungers, and a red-eyed flashback for many heads who came thru in the '90s. Originally released on cassette in edition of only 100 copies, it documents late night sessions recorded…
Live Knots
"Live Knots", Oren Ambarchi’s first release for PAN, presents two live realizations of ‘Knots’, the epic centrepiece of his Audience of One (Touch, 2012) release. Built on the interplay between Ambarchi’s swirling, guitar harmonics and the metronomic pulse and shifting accents of Joe Talia’s DeJohnette-esque drumming, the piece merges the organic push and pull of free improvisation with an overarching compositional framework.‘Tokyo Knots’ presents the complete recording of a duo performance of t…
Unit 2669
Helena Hauff and F#X finally unleash their second record as Black Sites. Returning to PAN following 2013's Prototype EP, the two hardware fetishists and resident DJs at Hamburg's iconic Golden Pudel club turn out two cauterizing, long-form acid/techno cuts on Unit 2669 EP. A-side "Unit 2669" is built around a narcotic, modulated 303 line and protean drones, while on the flip, "Mockba" is an exercise in tape manipulation and visceral mechanics; with its circuitry corroded by parasites, the …
Circuitous
At the nexus of Afrofuturism, science fiction, transcendental free jazz, and future hip hop, this new work from Eric Douglas Porter casts itself and its creator in a liminal zone most recognizably charted by astral traveler Sun Ra. Circuitous follows nearly a decade of releases for Deepblak -- the Oakland-rooted imprint of frequent collaborator Aybee -- and shares common blood with both the elevated consciousness of late '80s club culture and contemporary west coast beat scene. Built around Po…