Panelak

Arles / Lisbon noise & broken pop

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The lovely lad Idwal Fisher wrote this of the new Quatsch/Sunsplat tape on Urubu: https://tinyurl.com/knmukft: "easily Panelak’s best work. Put it down to the sunshine."

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Poland/Hungary Tour Post #3

Budapest, delayed because of illness and no internet. The tour's final gig, this time at a small venue called Zeg Zug, was good fun and my performance seemed to go down well with the wee but enthusiastic crowd.

A very big köszi to my wonderful hosts Birtalan Szabi, Pongrácz Kálmán and Tamás Ál :-)

During the tour I hit upon a useful way of approaching gigs. Often it's difficult to know what to prepare, or whether to prepare too much rather than too little. In any case, I've more recently performed standalone songs as Panelak -- it's difficult and tight yet keeps me on my toes. When I watch live acts, I like spontaneous and open-ended performances, but often get tired of 40 minute ramblings that travel very slowly between ideas. I'm an impatient listener maybe but Portuguese audiences are too forgiving the other way round. Performing a set of songs make me try to keep lively by dipping in and out of ideas, never wallowing around too long in just a couple. Muck about in a fun way... for 5 minutes. Repeat.

The tour's helped me find a useful way of approaching live performances, even though it involves the crowd having to wait a bit between songs. Here's my idea: Come armed with 10 individual songs, all different in nature, but only play, say, half of them. Two things determine which songs will be played: The venue, and the people attending. Some venues have acoustics which demand more resonant and drone-filled tracks, others the choppy, rhythmic ones. Some punters seem to need more challenging, others (like the older crowd in Olesnica) maybe need a few more 'pillows' to help them get used to the sounds, a little more accommodation with harmonies and singing and so on, and less brutal noise. All this is to avoid the experimental scene's very un-experimental pitfall; that of being too scared to perform, of exposing oneself. We go gigs and let artists simply stare at their equipment. If the sound produced is marvellous enough, this isn't a problem. But often there is something lacking. The venues and the environments we go to gigs are, after all, often relics of the divine adolescent artefact of good old rock n' roll. We shouldn't be scared of bringing more theatre of self exposure to the stage, in this deadening era of irony and genre jadedness.

I'm not mad about Budapest but enjoyed Bartok's house and this monk itching his balls!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLemYrzI3S9qwxVTLERdx0rMHsrKLiSUW -- videos

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Poland/Hungary Tour Post #2

Wrocław, South-West Poland. I adjusted my clock to Germanic Always-On-Time Time and set to recording two sessions with Shepherds of Cats. Best fun I’ve had all tour.

My Shepherd friends Jan and Oleg took care of buying the Czech beers and paprika crisps. This was much appreciated. Shepherd Adam and girlfriend Isabel gathered me at the right place right time and made sure I felt at home. Also appreciated!

Wrocław is a small shining city with no lack of fun. Many things appear German. Waiting at the red lights. Fussy organisation. Indoor space used up by clever cabinets and lockers. Plus we’re close to wonderful towns Dresden and Leipzig. Polskibus brings everything closer. In fact its probably the most active place in terms of outstanding cinemas, decent bars, cafes, a theatre, and small metal dwarves. Very dobra indeed for only 600,000 people.

2 gigs with Panelak set then Shepherds with Panelak. First at the creative arts centre OPT (pronounced “uppity” with Yorkshire accent) which was quiet but fun, I think we played very well together and I never felt like I was listening, but was already part of the Shepherds action from the moment I removed my dress. Second was in town 40 mins away, Olesnica, unusual for its concert hall dimensions and audience -- elderly folk from University of the Third Age. Great to perform to people who might not otherwise have heard us. After we played an old babcia in fur coat and fox hat came over and, with her impenetrable Polish, prodded my equipment curiously. An elderly gent who resembled my late Lancashire grandad approached and loudly revealed “I live in Canada some years! Hello how are you!”. Earlier, during my Panelak set, one audience member exclaimed “this is cat music (‘kotka muzyki’?) meaning ‘a right racket’. Small crowd but warm welcome. Nice review here: http://mojaolesnica.pl/19989,wystepy-w-bifk-u-przy-piwku.php

Can’t thank my Wrocław friends enough for a hearty welcome into a cold but exciting part of the world. For the train and flight tickets, the food and the hostel. From the bottom of my heart, Bardzo dziekuje.

Onwards for the last gig. Polskibus trip to Budapest: 45 złoti, or €10.50!

(First photo has no Adam, sorry)

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Poland / Hungary Tour post #1

What a way to start -- blown away by by Berlin duo Del_F64.0 (https://soundcloud.com/delf64_0) and they're gabbaclarinet fun. ADA is a squat venue with outstanding sound system. Also very dobra was the openness and curiosity of large crowd on blisteringly cold Thursday night.

If like me you enjoy towering Soviet monuments and creative macho architecture then Warsaw's your town. Could spend ages here. I like Poles and they're helpful, if disarmingly unemotional for this dramatic Brit.

First photo shows Del_F64.0's winning combination of organisation (clarinet stand) and blistering high jinks (sleeping beer bottles).

Next stop Wrocław!

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Adeus Leeds! + UK tour 2015 w. Shepherds of Cats + a Panelak album called The Om Tragichord

OLÁ, I moved to Lisbon and have pursued the DJ Compound Interest Rates project, more on that in future posts. 

Sweetly sad to leave Leeds, my music scene, my theatre and Quaker Meeting, but we said ADEUS by heaving and sweating and by playing what was a first for Panelak, a pop set , which some people loved and some people hated, and I’m still not sure what to make of it even after playing it twice in sunny Lisbon. Here’s a decent sum-up vid from my Polish buds. That gig was teamed up with the fabulous VJ Pietrushka, a video artist called Maciek Piatek who I will reveal more about in future blogpost boasts.

In Summer 2015 I went on a tour of England with Polish improv band Shepherds of Cats... What chaps! What fun! Cities hit: Liverpool, Bradford, Leeds, Halifax, Manchester and London. On the last date even Café Oto held us, but only by agreeing to relegate our sore bones to a nursery-shed-thing nearby, the name I forget, and the gig reviewed here by a Polish cultural magazine. Ah, the ‘Oto Project Space’. Drunk on St. Helens tropical beer from a Dalston off-license. In any case, I made some wonderful friends -- Jan, Dariusz, Maciek, Adam, Aleks -- and hope to make my way to their hometown of Wrocław soon. I hear good things about the city. I will not puke on your trains! 

Now a sweet story I want to tell. This tour and its gleeful shenanigans all came about because I became a fan of a Polish project called Fanfare. I heard a song of theirs on the Halifax-based Crow Versus Crow show #86 (listen here), loved it and emailed Fanfare HQ to say so. The recipient: A man named Jan. If they ever wanted to play in England, I said, come and we will arrange. Then it got interesting. “Nothing concrete yet” he said, “we are in touch”. Then: “I have just put into the white envelope something for you:)”. The love grew. How did you fund this Jan? I was curious to see how this stranger could send, free of charge, an album of spacious meandering fun in the snail mail for me. He responded: “We do not expect something from professional labels for example - If we need to release a CD we do it by ourself:) as you see:)”. Huge inspiration! Fun and introspective, without becoming engrossed in their own navels. Smart without being smirky or intellectual. God bless ’em!

Jan Fanfare is a truly impressive presence and simply the sweetest man imaginable. Equipped with endless enthusiasm and a tuggable beard, our online/offline friendship has been a huge sweet release, unexpectedly turning into a collaborative project that hopefully others enjoy as well. So much improv is more fun to perform that, god forbid, listen to. We had two releases out before we’d even met in person, covering some intimate improvisations that strike me as neither pretentious nor over-silly. Joe Murray (AKA Posset) put it nicely: “interior, close sounds are crackling at pillow-talk volumes but the external, wider sounds carry everything along in a gritty wake... the barely repressed air of hysteria” from this review.

After summer 2015, I prepared to leave my Leeds, oh!, for unknown Lisbon. Pretty much picked out of a hat, I just wanted a challenge and a bit of change. It’s all worked out very well here, but I enjoyed a fairly long online/print tradition of being being confused, once again, with Manchester-based Pascal Nichols, the tricky drummer genius (listen to this now!!) in a sweet but mistaken review here: http://idwalfisher.blogspot.pt/2016/01/pascal-nichols-leaves-leeds.html. 

Also by Idwal Fisher is a summary of my 2015 releases, including the “hideous” tape as No Thumbs, which is a project with Jon Marshall (AKA Singing Knives Records and Roman Nose), It makes the first release on Tutore Burlato, promptly ruining this Bologna-based label for many years to come. Do check out this label -- the Posset casette is molto buono indeed.

To finish a very long post, my latest Panelak album was released on Bristol’s LF Records, which I slapped up on YouTube here. An amusing review (”coughed up free-improv”!) by Paul of We Need Know Swords is here. The first track Hikikomori has a sample from The Eric Andre Show which my buddy Pete Cann introduced me to. I miss you Pete! I love you very very much Pete!

And I’ll sign off with some photos of MY FACE. The first by Yorkshire photographer/very good egg Martin Singleton:

And some pics from the Shepherds of Cats/Panelak tour, Summer 2015:

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I love this review on Polish Cultural site for gig in the Cafe Oto nursery thing... what’s it called... the sexy shed... Here’s the link: http://ceel.org.uk/culture/music/shepherds-of-cats-featuring-panelak-reviewed-by-depo-olukotun/ (”cross-dressing, acrobatics, screeched speeches and threatened nudity”)!

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2 releases with Polish improv band Shepherds of Cats.

https://soundcloud.com/shepherds-of-cats/shepherds-of-cats-and-panelak-muscle-atrophy-in-squirrels-left-leg

https://tombedvisionsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/shepherds-of-cats-with-special-appearance-of-dariusz-b-aszczak-and-panelak

Get in touch for purchase $$

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Moss Piglets back in action: “Nubile duo of Pete Cann (Half an Abortion, Inverted Nepal) + Pascal Ansell (Panelak) construct a noise totem of dense, low-brow clatterings and emotionally baffling theatrics.”

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New release on Bristol’s LF Records -- great work from Greg as well as Emi who did the drawings :-)

Get in touch if you’d like a copy. It’ll cost you £4.00 but I’ll throw in something nice (i.e. whatever unlistenable gunk I bought from Rare & Racy in Sheffield). 

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New Panelak on American comp -- thanks to Travis Johnson, you beauty!

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Catford gig, May 2015 -- thanks to Chrissie Caulfield and Stuart Russel

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Review of No Thumbs tape on Italian site: http://www.thenewnoise.it/no-thumbs-slug-birth/

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preview: Quatsch noise-fashion show at Bradford Threadfest, 24/5/2015

Panelak’s fashion show, Quatsch, has having its second outing, this time at Bradford Threadfest Sun 24th May 2015 at Bradford Playhouse. Performance with three models Sophie, Rebecca and Ersilia and new dresses made by Pascal-Panelak.