Pan Daijing’s second, a dialogue of ego fragments or so, in any case incredibly impressive in its enclosure. »Jade« is much more pointed, more concentrated than its predecessor, »Lack«, which was primarily all over the place with its field recordings. Here now there is only one place and this is hell. Has also 9 tracks the album. Everything here leads deeper and deeper IN, more and more tunnels instead of exit, the only signals are distorted sounds that certainly no reliable navigator sends. Hardly a beat that would give the step. Instead of that textures, layers, everything always tilts away. The electronics do not come from the depth. On »The Goat« the synths remind of Johann Jóhannsson and all his epigones: The art of making something just so askew that it simultaneously refers to the norm AND the deviation from it, and thus scares more than anything else, because something is just very, very clearly wrong here. Sometimes it gets really wild, then everything overrides, screeches, then you think of Jasss. Phew is certainly another appropriate reference, as here the spoken word lyricism softens again and again the leaden fog, short meditations on the torment, also the last Ossia comes to mind, or the final battle in »The Last Of Us 2«, if here also Gamer hang out. You live through this album and in the end you feel like shit. So good. Top 3 album 2021, for sure.
Scott Gordon
Metals
Diagonal