Anyone who pretends they don’t love panpipes is trying too hard. They’re brilliant - the breathy sound of cultural appropriation. So share your favourite uses of this glorious instrument here. Will also accept use of Gregorian chanting, Mongolian throat singing, and general early 90s ‘world music’ and its offshoots.
Undisputed classic of the genre - stolen by a million and one club remixes… it’s Deep Forest!
Possibly the defining moment for the panpipe?
And for a more modern take… How do you bring one of the greatest albums of the previous decade to a fitting climax? You use the motherfucking panpipes is what you do!
Has anyone read David Toop’s Sinister Resonance? He talks at length about panpipes. He doesn’t quite use the term “cultural appropriation”, but he skirts around it; hinting that they have a potency that’s been all but forgotten thanks to their overuse in a certain type of entry-level new age music.
I’ve not. I never know quite what to think about it. I unironically love entry-level new age like Deep Forest, and I’m a huge fan of psytrance/psydub artists like Shpongle and Ott. But then there are a whole host of folk churning out by-the-numbers aural turds with album covers of ‘exotic’ women on a sea of ‘psychadelic’ colours and it seems incredibly patronising. Full-on appropriation rather than appreciation.
I’m with you on the unironic love. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered any of those by-the-numbers aural turds you speak of, though I’m now morbidly curious.
Yes, I am asking you to recommend some by-the-numbers aural turds. Or could you at least wave dismissively in their general direction?
Mate, I adore this site. It’s so po-faced - it’s url even has /love/ in it! Anyway, they do weekly round-ups of releases - loads of PWYW Bandcamp records. You get the occasional gem popping up (Globular - Holobiont was one from last year) but the majority is aural turd. The big thing at the moment appears to be psystep/psybass which is exactly as bad as you’d think.
