But the past is the past, and they’d prefer to keep it that way (hence, the withholding of last names). They’re pleased by the results, especially considering the technological and financial constraints they were facing at the time all three members say they prefer the tape-rot version to the remastered version they uploaded late last year. “I’d find the CD every couple of years when we were cleaning out the house,” says Owain, with a mock sigh of relief-“Thank god, I’m glad that CD isn’t on the internet.” Not that he and the others are ashamed of the record.
That may explain the band’s initial freak-out upon the album’s re-emergence it was, after all, a run-in with their teenage selves. Eventually, the band members went their separate ways, leaving music by the wayside (except for Andy, who currently works in mixing and mastering). “I don’t think people realize how crap the equipment was that we had access to.” (This explains the disc rot-another mystery solved!)Īfter completing the album, in 2000, Panchiko pressed 30 copies of D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L>, which they sent to journalists and record labels. So, you had two seconds to sample-that was it,” Andy says. “I used to have a keyboard called the DJX, and it was this 200-pound instrument that had two seconds of sample memory. Inspired by the genre-swapping, electronics-inflected rock bubbling forth from the UK (Owain cites Super Furry Animals and Radiohead as two of their biggest influences), and abetted by the newfound affordability of digital-recording software, Owain and Andy assembled D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L> in their bedroom. The Panchiko fandom finally made contact the following day, when they received their reply from Owain, a simple “Yeah.” At last, the world had confirmation: not only were Panchiko not 14-year-old kids, they were the real deal, right down to the tape rot.įor a viral phenomenon, Panchiko’s actual biography, as told by Owain, Andy, and Sean, is rather unremarkable: just four childhood friends working with cheap equipment, no money, no label, and certainly no promo. “I woke up one day,” recounts Owain, “and ping-there’s a message on a defunct Facebook page of mine, with some music, that I hadn’t updated in nine years: ‘Hello, you’ll probably never read this, but are you the lead singer of Panchiko?’” The query took Owain by shock to his and Andy’s knowledge, D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L> had never been uploaded to the internet. It wasn’t long before the internet detectives showed up on their door-or rather, in their inbox. So the Panchiko hive mobilized, gathering on subreddits and discord servers, examining every square inch of the packaging for potential clues, and even calling the Nottingham record store where D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L had allegedly sprung up in the first place. Was this an honest-to-God ’90s curio? A prank hatched by internet-savvy teens? An internet experiment in nostalgia, in the spirit of vaporwave? Nobody knew. The record’s sensationalist appeal was multifold. The listener uploaded the ripped audio-the recordings sounded like they were plagued with disc rot-to file-sharing sites, and later YouTube, where they began circulating among internet music circles.
On July 21st, 2016, a user on 4chan’s /mu/ board posted a photo of a mysterious CD they’d found at a record store in Nottingham, UK: a rough-worn demo titled D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L, purportedly released in 2000 by four musicians: Owain, Andy, Shaun, and John (their last names have purposefully omitted in this story more on that later). Pre-order buy pre-order buy you own this wishlist in wishlist go to album go to track go to album go to track
0 kommentar(er)
