Fr, 28.03.2014, 23:00 Uhr

PAN Records Showcase

If "the art of noise" were a saying, it would be coined with Bill Kouligas' PAN label in mind. Originally from Athens, he moved to London in 2005 to study graphics. Kouligas has been intrinsic to the underground noise scene—solo as Family Battle Snake and with innumerable collaborations—over the years. The label was conceived in 2008 as much as a sonic outlet as a creative platform, with artist Kathryn Politis joining Kouligas to contribute to its visual concept. PAN began with a very clear-cut aesthetic—a series of ten releases crafted from found black and white images, overlaid with geometric designs silk-screened in colour on a transparent PVC sleeve. Musically the records, though diverse, also mined the same experimental analogue niche. Holding onto their left-of-field decree, however, PAN has since visually and audibly expanded, taking on more electronic sensibilities with records such as the re-pressed Sun Pandämonium LP by Hecker, Keith Fullerton Whitman's Disingenuity / Disingenuousness, Thomas Ankersmit and Valerio Tricoli's electro-acoustic collaboration, Forma II, and the label's most dance-friendly effort to date, Intersex, from Berlin-based Heatsick. At the other end of the spectrum PAN has documented sound art installations by James Hoff and Eli Keszler, in addition to archiving significant material from Musique concrete, outsider and/or avant-garde artists such as Ghédalia Tazartès, Trevor Wishart and Frieder Butzmann. But what ties all the incongruent threads together—aside from the structural format of each record—is the care and personal stamp Kouligas and Politis place on every one. PAN isn't just a label and these aren't just records, it is "an ongoing project," as Kouligas comments "a whole process," with each item or "object" existing as a complete audio-visual package, and treasure to own. Lee Gamble (UK) https://soundcloud.com/leegamble Bill Kouligas (Berlin) https://soundcloud.com/pan_recs Rashad Becker (Berlin) https://soundcloud.com/pan_recs/rashad-becker-dances-iii-pan NHK'Koyxen (JP) https://soundcloud.com/nhk_koyxen F#X (HH) https://soundcloud.com/fsharpx