Drone Records

DAIJING, PAN - Jade

Format: LP

Label & Cat.Number: PAN 113

Release Year: 2021

Note: second full length LP for the Chinese post-industrial sound artist, an intense, high-class tour de force into catharsis, solitude and darkness...- "It's an anxious, solitary album that twins basement noise aesthetics with Daijing's cathartic performance, playing her signature vocals against screaming oscillators, booming Wolf Eyes-esque percussion and uncomfortable analog bass. " [Boomkat] - comes on white vinyl with 8 page 12" booklet

Price (incl. 19% VAT): €23.50

More Info

"LP on white vinyl! 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 Gospodinov & design by NMR."

"High-minded noise operatics and ruptured spoken word experiments from PAN mainstay Pan Daijing on her second album for the label.

If Daijing's PAN debut "Lack" was operatic body horror, all fireworks and theatrics, "Jade" drags that body inside, dumps it into a grimy bathtub and locks the door. It's an anxious, solitary album that twins basement noise aesthetics with Daijing's cathartic performance, playing her signature vocals against screaming oscillators, booming Wolf Eyes-esque percussion and uncomfortable analog bass.

'The Goat' allows her words to creep slowly over a backdrop of slithering, industrial distortion. Her voice is barely audible, whispered in the spaces between muted squeals and repeating pulses. On 'Dictee', Daijing wails and hums over distorted cello moans; on 'Dust' there's the suggestion of a song, shattered into pieces and rebuilt using ill-fitting replacement parts.

The album's most successful moment is when Daijing allows a crack of light to shine in through the tightly-drawn curtains. 'Let' layers disarmingly sweet synthesizer chimes over Daijing's cool, confident vocals. "Could it be possible, I take my bath in the ocean, I can't get out," she repeats ominously as synth tones creep into view.

It's a suffocating album, made in solitude to represent the visceral anguish of the void. Fans of '80s industrial drone tomes from Ramleh or M.B. or more recent noise plates from Puce Mary, LINGUA IGNOTA or Pharmakon should investigate without delay." [Boomkat]

https://soundcloud.com/pan_hq/pan-daijing-dust-pan-113