Pan Daijing exposes her mental depths on debut album Lack 惊蛰, out on PAN

Exercise is frequently cited as a temporary but reliable mend for what mentally ails you, and even though Pan Daijing has previously commented on her positivity-driven desire to stay active through yoga and boxing, what happens when a sparring blow to the pancreas isn’t quite enough to reach neural stabilization?

The China-born musician makes no bones about using music (especially noise) as an additional means of catharsis and resolution. Her recent A Satin Sight EP was composed in part while she was enduring an especially tough time living in Shanghai, and the tracks that resulted might be said to represent an aural therapy session, which could potentially be re-utilized by listeners in a similar manner — thus helping them forgo the need for cathartic sidewalk-driving while playing GTA V.

And, in another possible effort to reduce the need to compulsively exact sadistic video game mayhem in order to control one’s emotions: Pan Daijing has just announced Lack 惊蛰, her debut LP, out on PAN July 28. The album came about after two years of composing, recording, and editing field recordings and improvisational live performances, and the process as a whole is being described by PAN as “intuitive and raw” for the now loosely Berlin-based artist. One might reasonably argue that she took stream of consciousness to the musical realm. Daijing elaborates:

When I was finalising this album, they didn’t feel like tracks to me anymore, but more like a psychoanalytical process. I saw myself being this absurd, mad person ‘acting’ out the sounds… It’s rather physical, and became like a mindgame. All things came out naturally as part of me.

For continued therapy, head over to PAN’s SoundCloud to listen to the track, “Plate of Order,” head here to pre-order, and check out the cover art and full-album tracklisting down below — after re-experiencing the excellent, shimmering cut that Daijing co-contributed to this year’s resplendent Mono No Aware collection.

Lack 惊蛰 tracklisting:

01. Phenomenon
02. A Loving Tongue
03. Practice of Hygiene
04. Plate of Order
05. Act of The Empress
06. Come to Sit, Come to Refuse, Come to Surround
07. Eat
08. The Nerve Meter
09. A Situation of Meat
10. Lucid Morto

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