Pan Daijing 'Jade 玉观音'

What if a song was not a culmination but a singe, an imprint, or a crater left in the wake of creative process? On her new record 'Jade 玉观音', Pan Daijing composes at a different scale than that we’ve come to know. Since the release of her groundbreaking LP 'Lack' in 2017, Daijing has expanded her operatic vision into a series of major commissioned exhibition performances at institutions including the Tate Modern, Martin Gropius Bau, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

Developed for full casts of opera singers and dancers, and reaching for an all-encompassing durational experience of intensity for both performer and audience, the development of these works was for Daijing as emotionally disarming as it was thrilling. In order to continue accessing her own limits, Daijing had to develop a place of sanctuary within her own practice. Its nine tracks written and recorded over the last three years, 'Jade 玉观音' is the sound of solitary release and refuge, of creative self-sustenance. Written without the imperatives of direct address to performers or audience, 'Jade 玉观音' speaks inward, while inviting a kind of rhetorical listening.

The artist draws on materials familiar from her previous work: namely, ascetic electronic textures that rumble and pierce, and voice bent in irreverent directions. In place of catharsis, however, her arrangements here linger in tension, extending curiosity towards the delicate void that nourishes extremes. They toy with the minor capacities of song: repetition, chant, observations that conclude without resolving.