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Artist
Pancrace
11+ albums
organexperimentalmodern composition
about
Pancrace is a quintet from France comprising Prune Bécheau, Arden Day, Julien Desailly, Léo Maurel and Jan Vysocky. Pancrace began with a residence in 2015 at the Saint Pancrace church in Dangolsheim where the instrument inventor Léo Maurel resides. Pancrace’s debut self-titled double lp was released by Penultimate Press in 2017 and garnered much praise from across the community, ending up in many end of year lists including The Wire magazine’s best releases of that year. Following the release of the vinyl the quintet toured around Europe. After the first record and subsequent tour the band were despondent that the main character of their story, the church organ, was not there. They took on tour some organ pipes, bird calls and other things which could recall the church organ but this intrinsic element was still missing. A series of meetings and chance encounters resulted in the band developing their own organ which they named “ORGANOUS”. The approach of Pancrace is based on the physicality of sound, a choice of specific tone qualities within a given spatial contextual awareness. Therefore the manufacturing and usage of the musical instrument are constantly reassessed. Consequently, playing with the mechanical aspect of the instruments is central to their musical approach and narrative. Designing an unbound pipe organ – though emulating some of the mechanical idiomatics of the initial Pancrace church organ – seemed the obvious way to gain more spatial control over a vast c
