PAN's first release of 2013 is an epic plunderphonic simulation recommended to followers of Thought Broadcast, Wanda Group, Ghédalia Tazartès. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, pressed on 140g vinyl and packaged in a pro-press color jacket which itself is housed in a silkscreened PVC sleeve with artwork by Kathryn Politis & Bill Kouligas** PAN's first move on 2013 is a psychedelic, plunderphonic concrète collage by Athens-based artist Jar Moff. 'Commercial Mouth' is perhaps best aligned with the gyroscopic logic of labelmates Ghédalia Tazartès or Joseph Hammer, intersecting and overlapping sonic vectors at oblique trajectories carved and canted into shape and space with an elemental geometry and the sort of calloused, knotty finish that suggests he may have lost a thumb or finger in the process. It's a compelling and ambitious sound for such a relatively inexperienced artist; acousmatic samples are stretched, cut-up and recombined with free jazz dexterity between opposing poles of lysergic hip hop and electro-acoustic noise, functioning at a highly impressive level somewhere between the abstract underground and more disciplined, academic skools of sound thought. But, taking his previous appearances on the Harald Grosskopf remix album and Matthewdavid's Leaving Records into account, it's not such a far fetched proposition, and one evidently within his grasp. Across the A-side's 'Tziaitzomanasou', shards of industrial percussions fracture and buckle in a rusted sci-fi soundsphere sounding like Thought Broadcast and Wanda Group rendered in 3D by Bee Mask, whilst the B-side's 'Commercial Mouth' feels even further gone, inhabiting a frayed and almost anxious ecology of zig-zagging bleats reminding of Golden Retriever mixed with lazer-guided no wave skronk and the kind of visceral, cuticle-flaying dynamic heard on Reinhold Freidl's incredible 'Inside Piano' LP. The result is a baffling but exhilarating collision of styles and techniques handled with a nearly synaesthetic quality, you almost see this record appearing as broken waveforms and physical objects sprouting from the speakers/headphones.
