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WedBerlin-based label PAN can be described without exaggeration as one of the most exciting and conceptually compelling platforms for experimental music around today, particularly because the diversity of its releases cannot be pinned down to a single thematic or ostensible aesthetic correlation.
Founded in 2008, PAN fully embraces the radically open aesthetic of today’s music and art, highlighting a fascinating wealth of works across genres, generations, and scenes. With a selection of works inextricably tied to the personalities of label owners Bill Kouligas and Kathryn Politis, PAN delivers quality curatorial filters that enable listeners to find meaningful points of entry into today’s unlimited sound universes. Analog synthesizer explorations, noise, improvisation, and sound installations all have their place, as do sleazy disco journeys, rave deconstructions, and non-standard all-nighters.
The Berghain’s rooms and recesses will come alive during part of this label showcase, via several spatial works. Known for his tireless explorations of musical algorithms, Mark Fell presents a special audio and light installation, complete with strobes. Keith Fullerton Whitman comes equipped with his signature custom hybrid analog/digital hardware, exploring his concept of an indeterministic, multi-temporal “free” electronic music and the spatiality of sound on the Berghain’s unique 6-point system through self-made patches and algorithms, while Florian Hecker takes control of the building’s sonic central nervous system by simultaneously sending different signals to multiple nerve endings in the Berghain, its first floor entrance space, and to the Panorama Bar. Encouraging listeners to really move around, Hecker’s performance can be heard in entirely different ways from diverse vantage points.
Enveloping these spatial explorations are equally playful performances by sound collagist Jar Moff, who remodels the past in order to create a baffling yet functioning head-on collision between early plunderphonics and an abstracted futuristic hip hop aesthetic. Lee Gamble constructs a set that begins with the reworkings of his collection of mid-90s jungle cassette compilations as featured on his acclaimed Diversions 1994-1996 LP, and over time accelerates into computerised techno gems that hold a fine balance between endorphine kinesics, eery reality shifts, and depleted pleasure the clubbing experience is known for. Supported with selections from Call Super, the night gets sucked into a lasciviously liminal wormhole finale, courtesy of Heatick’s psychedelic, multi-hour extended keyboard set.
In collaboration with PAN.
Mark Fell aka Sensate Focus is a multidisciplinary artist based in Sheffield. Initially best known for his work together with Mat Steel in the duo SND, he currently keeps a busy schedule primarily with the performance of his seminal work, Multistability.
Former pirate radio DJ, computer musician, member of CYRK.
Keith Fullerton Whitman is a musician based in Cambridge with a deep interest in Musique Concrète, systems- and process-music, using an array of often custom built hardware modular synthesis equipment and studio technology. In addition, to his own music, he is known for his realizations & performances of pieces by Dick Raaijmakers, and Conrad Schnitzler.
Florian Hecker is an acclaimed sound artist with an extensive discography with solo and collaborative releases on labels such as Editions Mego, Pan, Presto?!, Rephlex, Tochnit Aleph and Warner Classics. Most recently he completed Chimerization for dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel.
Call Super is the British and now Berlin based DJ and producer JR Seaton. After releases on Five Easy Pieces and Throne of Blood, his next EP is scheduled for Fabric’s new Houndstooth label.
Athens based Jar Moff recently released his debut LP Commercial Mouth on PAN. His style is a kind of omnivorous plunderphonics, using found material and twisting it to create widescreen sonic collages. He has previously released an EP on Leaving Records.
Steven Warwick is an artist, musician, and writer living and working in Berlin. His practice is paradigmatic of an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses theatre-making and DJing along with art, music, and writing. His work is disseminated on a multitude of platforms including records, galleries, nightclubs, publications, and the internet.
Steven Warwick is a British artist, musician and writer residing in Berlin. His practice includes durational performance installations, plays and films using the construction of situations and language. He also makes music as Heatsick and under his own name – the latest release, Nadir, appeared recently on PAN.