Pan Electric

by Mister Mime

9th October 2020

 
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Pan Electric’s "Music For a Busy Head 2” is the follow up album that comes 2 decades after its predecessor and turns out to be an essential ambient work with a strongly growing relevance with every passing moment that the modern human being spends alive. The music makes it’s presence powerfully felt without the need to impose upon the ears, and emphasises on two of the most the most underestimated yet essential musical tools, space and dynamics, by entwining ambient textures with the versatile palettes of the guitar. Of all the sounds that would be bouncing around in your cranium lately, this record unassumingly catches your attention and denotes the acme of ambient music as of 2020. Give yourself the gift of cleaning up your auditory headroom with this sympathetic ambient symphony. 

 

MM: What is the concept of the album ‘Music* For a Busy Head Vol.2’? Pretty self explanatory I suppose, but I’d like to know first hand in your own words about this project. Also, why the asterisk after Music? :)


Pan Electric:  The asterisk was a design detail that designer Dave Dowding put into the art work on MFBH vol 1 . I liked it so kept it for vol 2. Theres no hidden meaning but it implies a different view of music I guess .
Volume 1 & 2 are designed for relaxation and inner focus. Vol 1 was written and produced after a period of informal study into sound healing . Volume 2 is an evolution but with a little less constraint and  more free expression which is why there's more live guitar in it. I also wrote from the guitar with volume 2 which I didn’t do with volume 1. Because the ideas started with a more melodic/thematic base the album feels a little more musical. 

MM: Do any of the tracks have stories behind them? 
 Pan Electric: The initial ideas were sketched in Morocco on a break in Jan 2020. Naming tracks for me is normally a case of creating a working title which contains something of the DNA of the piece within it or at least implies it. It might be as simple as a day when I saw clouds forming in certain way or a feeling that came through whilst playing . I would say it's a more impressionist approach , theres no major stories. 

  The production started as I was recovering from Covid in April. I spent everyday by a local lake meditating and chanting which was hugely therapeutic for me. As a consequence the ideas from Morocco were given a new setting, metaphorically . All of the promo videos I made were shot at dawn at the lake on my phone. The stillness both of the time of day and of the lockdown are reflected in the album  and in some of  the titles. 

 
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MM: How do you accomplish the merging of musical palettes of the guitar with the ambiences of electronic music?   
Pan Electric: This is something that has evolved through trial and error. With MFBH vol2 the ideas had to stand alone as a musical idea first. Creating palettes of colour and expanding an arrangement from a solid musical idea is much easier than imposing a melody on a created backing track at least for me, but everyone is different. 

Being aware of the frequencies and timbres of the guitar helps to find sounds that compliment. A basic understanding of register helps and then of course breaking all my own rules and turning things upside down is also essential. No two productions are the same. Also the guitar is an incredibly versatile and expressive instrument. I used a lot  of electric guitar played with an "ebow “ which gives a bowed, haunting sound as well as the picked or strummed  acoustic parts or the  harp like sounds of Ukulele which also gets an appearance on a couple of tracks. Knowing the stringed instruments well helps in finding ways to paint around them. 

MM: According to you, what is the place or role of ambient music in the sea of musical styles and genres?
Pan Electric: If you go back to Brian Eno’s original definition then its about creating music that is merged with environment and can be either engaged with or ignored. Im fascinated by the way music can change the state of consciousness of the listener so from a mediative angle, the idea that some music can help lower the activity of the pariatal lobe of the brain means that the sense of self and the the inner narratives that create tension and inner conflict often dissolve. So in that respect ambient music serves an incredible role as a way of defining an immersion into a space as well as the reduction of “ego” within that space in a sense of getting healthily lost or immersed at a point in time and space. 


MM: How does sound healing and sound therapy play into your life and art?
Pan Electric:  In a big way, a fair bit of study was done in the making of volume one through reading and attending seminars and talks and retreats and then experimenting  but my engagement with mantra since 2012 has also  had a huge role and Im now developing an interest in the Pythagorean roots of sound healing. 

Im interested in the idea that music can be functional art- that with the right intention we can create a clearly defined impact on the listener, something beyond  story telling or the "decorating of time", to paraphrase Frank Zappa. I firmly believe that music can change our metabolism and our brain activity significantly and as such is a powerful transformational tool to be treated with caution and respect. 

 
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MM: Can you tell us about how ‘Pan Electric' was conceived?

Pan Electric: Id been involved in the Psychedelic Trance scene in the 90’s and needed a change . I wanted to make music that was slower and more melodic and allowed me to express through the guitar . ‘Pan Electric’ as a name came to me out of the blue . Pan, as a Greek God was symbolic of many things that I resonate with including music a, nature, wildness and spirituality . The word also means Universal or many. The “electric" part reflects mu use of electronic equipment but also the spark of invention, the Uranian quality . I guess there is a slightly wild pagan aspect to Pan  as well , he enchants and expresses and is associated with the rustic, with nature.

MM: Would you care to tell us anything about the album cover art?

Pan Electric: One of many photos and videos taken from my lakeside meditations. Its a grab form  a video which carried a particular quality for me. I used it as a test image to try an promote the album via Instagram and lots of photographers liked the image on my posts so I decided to scrape the first ideas for the cover and go with that one. 

The duck, the tree and the misty lake and water all capture the gentleness of my dawn communion with nature and therefore with God during my recovery from Covid. 

MM: As of the year 2020, how would you feel that technological advancements have impacted music as an art form and as a business/industry?

Pan Electric: Well in a big picture sense each change of medium from Vinyl to CD to  mp3 and now to streaming has brought change not just for how the public receive music but how artists get paid and create. Sadly each change has lowered our earning capacity . Im  in danger of  becoming  luddite. There's one side which is a very real and positive democratisation  of creativity, if you consider, for example,  how much an apple mac laptop can enable creative process and there's another  side in which see algorithms taking away the need for craft and skill and most importantly visceral and skilful expression. I joked with a musician colleague and friend Neil Cowley about the birth of “Preset Culture” - a photo filter on FB or Insta is a good example of both democratising technique but also de-valuing skill. 
Of course there are many creative traditions where a classic or pure approach still require discipline and  a level of skill that tech cannot re-create .And as humans, “story” is intertwined with creativity and so we still have dominion through detail and experience and that uniquely human need to give and receive story.
An algorithm cannot create poetry or if it does we feel the difference but were are very close to an era where they will create everything in mainstream culture including music and poetry and I worry about this automation of the human experience and the loss of soulful expression that it may bring. We have become complacent to the advantages our technologies give us and in general the effect is negative. Especially where environment is concerned.
Im also engaged with people who are using tech in  ways that bring very positive value to the creative process and  maintain something soulful within that, but essentially if you cannot start with the skilful expression of an idea through analogue mediums and engage in acts of simple expression then you are losing an essence that is connective . Ideas need to come ahead of production values and expression needs to come ahead of ideas. Algorithms only imitate those layers and levels that make something authentic and unique.

MM: On one hand we seem to have developed so much towards being a smaller and united world, yet there is so much disparity, as well as communication gaps, ADD, OCD, and several other abbreviated conditions that denote how separated we are from our individual and collective selves. In short, the world  seems to be becoming a crazier place than ever. How can music help us to get out of our own heads, connect with our fellow people and be a completely involved with the wonderful phenomenon of life on this planet?

Pan Electric: I spent three months at an Ashram in Nz with the Satyananda community after a close friend died very tragically .When I was there I talked a lot with one of the Swamis and we explored the reason why music, mantra and art are such strong aspects of many traditions and especially the Bhakti tradition. 
   “Music is the fastest way to bypass the mind”  was his considered statement . I stand by that statement more than any other as an answer to your question.
It can define or defy time, connect you to  hidden feelings and emotions and in transcendent moments to hidden realms , it can unite us in congregation and focus with community and with values and needs in society . It can can tell and retain and carry  story  and invoke atmosphere as a result . As a player, performing and creating  is an act of meditation, focus and devotion of itself. Is there a more powerful medium of divine inspiration and connection for a human being? I’m biased of course, but I don't think so. 

MM: What are your interests outside of music? Do you cook, for example?

Pan Electric: I do cook though I will let others be the judge of how well ! I love to potter in the garden and lose myself in nature, I love to read and write . If I wasn’t a musician I'd be a writer. Most of all I like to engage and debate and connect with others. 
An agent once told me that the role of an artists is simply to say this : 
“This is what I see , what do you see ?” . On many levels , I agree  and so the creating and playing of music for me  is part of an on going conversation on what it is to be alive.

 
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