- A top experimental label delivers four vinyl-only club tracks.
- Some recent PAN albums have explored the fundamentals of 21st-century existence. Amnesia Scanner used harsh, digitised club sounds to interrogate technological subservience on Another Life, while Puce Mary's The Drought was a noisy meditation on shifting notions of the body and survival. High concepts have been underpinned by deep context, the already dense sounds accompanied by detailed artist statements. By contrast, the first entry in PAN's new five-part series of club-focused, vinyl-only releases is minimally presented. There's no artwork, no accompanying blurbs—just four thumping club tracks by Tzusing and M.E.S.H.
Split opens with the crunching, cavernous kicks of Tzusing's "Circa Taipei," the Malaysian-Chinese artist laying a needling, high-definition melody and throat singing—last heard on 2017's In A Moment A Thousand Hits—across its surface. "The Whistle" distills the horror inflections of Tzusing's previous output into a more refined but no less unsettling whole. The drums aren't as explosive, but all the action occurs in the track's foreground. High-pitched strings slide across the beat, joined later by cacophonous pig squeals. M.E.S.H. picks up where the rowdier tracks from 2017's Hesaitix left off: "Atemlos" is squirming, glitchy reggaeton, while the more intricately rhythmic "Festival Circuit" is a twisting techno stomper through which sparse, dystopian synths occasionally cut through.
TracklistA1 Tzusing - Circa Taipei
A2 Tzusing - The Whistle
B1 M.E.S.H. - Atemlos
B2 M.E.S.H. - Festival Circuit