Panxig - Slowmusic

“These songs deal with emotions born from being a woman, a mother and an artist; of being subject to certain stereotypes and what lies behind that: losing yourself and losing what's real. Modern female melancholy. Prosaic stuff.” - Panxing On April 16th 2021, Copenhagen songwriter and producer Panxing will release her second full-length album Slowmusic via Anyines, the Danish label and platform which she co-runs. It has been four years since Panxing released her debut album Anti gone (2017) which was praised as both “unforgettable” and a “showstopper” (FACT magazine). Four years that have been spent mothering, maintaining the lives of two children, working part time as an art historian and occasionally writing and recording music. Traces of domesticity haunt the sound, process and feel of Slowmusic, that has been conceived incoherently over time and finished through the temporalities of lockdown co-parent producing. “The album title deals with this blurring or dissolving of time pivotal for the music’s process of becoming. Slowmusic to me is a state of mind but also a word of resistance against the acceleration that governs most areas of modern life.” Panxing explains. The piano is a recurring element for Panxing and has been the starting point for composing, sometimes played, sometimes programmed and always the closest companion to the journeys of the voice. While Anti gone featured vocals that were pitched unrecognizably and blurred in effects, on Slowmusic the voice is front and center in seven of the album’s eight tracks. The first take vocals stand untreated and raw, speaking and singing clearly and directly into the ears of the listener. “I wanted to use my voice not just for singing and speaking, but as a percussive tool, using my body as the filter to convey the feeling intuitively, without overthinking it.” she says. While cherishing a spontaneous and unschooled approach to songwriting and composing, each track on Slowmusic delves deeply into particular feelings to do with time: “I’ve been fixated on timeliness: past/present and frozen, to endure time, time as activism and care, interruptions, children, giving birth; all these crazy bodily experiences that distort the feeling of linear time”, Panxing says.The theme of motherhood is iterated most intensely on ‘Take Care Time’, the only track that doesn’t feature Panxing’s own voice. Instead we hear her daughter chattering and her newborn crying while friend and composer Astrid Sonne is rehearsing the viola. The album has been recorded in a variety of places from the west coast of Denmark to Portugal. But mostly the music was made at Panxing’s home in Copenhagen using the small slots of time available to her. Each track is performed without vanity; drawing the listener up close, with Panxing exploring improvisation as a means to keep the material fresh for herself in the process: “The music has been written by following an impulse or a specific mood all the way, without too much planning. Improvisation doesn’t always float, but the moments where it does are captured and enhanced on the album. The times that it didn’t work out, I wouldn’t touch the music for months after, so it felt unspoiled when I returned” Panxing explains. The half speaking/half singing narration sculpts a variety of scenarios and scenes. “What are you pretending not to know? What did I learn today? Who did I love? What made me laugh? If you were dying, would you worry about this?” a vehement vocal asks us on ‘Forbes Jam’ leading thoughts to the double sided focus on entertainment and productivity of the 21st century. But then, on the following track ‘Co-existing’ a tender singing voice calms our unease with the words: “the songs they are good and I want them to come”. And maybe both these vocal sentiments capture the significance of the iconic album title. Slowmusic is the feel.