“I feel that I’m not only choreographing the movement; I’m also choreographing the space”. The quote in the online magazine NR when interviewing the artist may sound like a reasonable conclusion for those who have been following her work. Born in the southern region of China, Guiyang, but living in Berlin for the last few years, Pan Daijing is part of a vast list of sound creators redefining contemporary music. She has been part of countless performances and has marked her presence in dream concerts such as Sónar, CTM, Atonal or Unsound. From noise he has generated a multiplicity of expressions; from the crackling fire of the post-industrial to the margins of opera and concrete music. Tragic, emotional and transgressive – in an attempt to frame possible traces to the indescribable.

Between her own voice, analogue synthesizers and field recordings, Daijing’s work is completed, album after album. Lack and Jade quickly become modern classics. Highly textural, her compositions break through genres, eras and geographies; rather than showing the way, they shape seemingly impossible paths to greater destinations. Circulating through themes associated with ancient mythology or social emancipation, Pan Daijing’s music questions and confronts the nature of his own reality. Inevitably, it evokes the human condition in an imaginary ceremony of wet earth and crackling fire.

The frenzy of performances in various art institutions and museums around the world have enabled this more conceptual exploration around his sound and visual creations. In 2023, he returns to the stage, but with fewer staves and more machines; the need to return to more vivid and intimate spaces where rhythms can set the tone of the night. For this reason, a return to Lisbon that in truth will seem more like a premiere. Naturally obligatory. NA

A somewhat omnipresent figure on the Lisbon music circuit, Aires has had a career that is worthy of attention. As well as being a musician, he’s a water cooler, having co-founded the Colectivo Casa Amarela, an editorial entity with a frankly promising collection of vision. He is also part of the projects Fashion Eternal, Peak Bleak, Scolari and Hot Dancerzzz. This constancy of energy in flux is now materialized in a new album, another key piece to better understand Bruno Pereira’s sonic searches as Aires.

Chains of Silver, Chains of Gold starts from a hypothetical set of questions: “How many different shades of red are there? How many different drones can one extract from a single melody? Or from a single note? How many colours can one remember from a single memory? How long can a feeling last? All natural inquietudes of who operates on capsulated moments in himself, finding filigrees and sculpting the sound in several scales and expressions. And Aires has shown that this path is not only surprising, but also something apparently infinite – or, at least, whose limit expands each time one takes another step forward.

It is by the hand of the small but valuable Finnish label World Canvas that this record takes shape. Comprising two long pieces, and two respective remixes, Chains of Silver, Chains of Gold, offers us the sense of a slow release, as one who leaves behind the weight and voracious speed of everyday life. There is a real dynamic in the apparent static light that illuminates the rocky landscapes of this music. The reinterpretations of Vanity Productions (from the equally important Posh Isolation) and Romance Relic (precisely from World Canvas), intertwine in a familiar harmony, making one almost forget that these are external signatures of what we have heard before. A complete picture of encounter and commitment, capable of leaping within its own canvas. NA