PANCRACE
“Pancrace”

500 copies
Penultimate Press is proud to present the debut recording from French outfit Pancrace. Music for pipe organ Stiehr-Mockers 1848, Bird Calls, Baroque Violin, Tin Whistle, Boîtes à Bourdons, Landscape Piano, Motorised Bow, Standuino Pi Synth, Microphones, Hurgy Toys, AM radio, Church Bells, Uilleann Pipes and Hulusi. Pancrace is an improvising quintet comprising French, British and Austrian performers. The members include Prune Bécheau, Arden Day, Julien Desailly, Léo Maurel and Jan Vysocky. Pancrace is also the name of the church in Dangolsheim Alsace located next to where the instrument inventor Léo Maurel lives. Maurel makes ingeniously designed instruments inspired by the hurdy gurdy. The recording emerged from a disruption of the traditional elements within the church, namely the church organ which was prepared inside out whilst the performers challenged it’s gregarious authority with an array of constructed and modified instruments. In Pancrace one can hear many of these shape-shifting instruments and devices being twiddled without quite knowing which are bowed,
plucked, hammered or rubbed. The results are a maelstrom of sound and song which see-saw between the harrowing and the sublime with incredible detail to sonic content. Pancrace instigates proceedings in the confinement of an organ; a Cyclops puffing its continuous and raucous breath only to be woken by instruments who, like horseflies, mischievously start tormenting proceedings with microtones and striated polyrhythms. The journey ends four sides later with the language of the birds imposing an unadorned silence on the church.