PANTALEIMON (pan-ta-lay-mon) is the pseudonym of one Andria Degens (dee-jens).

Andria Degens was born on the 8th November in Caterham, Surrey, England and is descended from Dutch and Irish ancestry.

She intuitively started playing and singing when she was a young child. In her own words, “I would play around with a little Casio or my acoustic guitar, working out tunes and riffs and I always had a soft spot for circularity. I used to record things on an old cassette recorder my dad gave me”.

After many years working within the record industry (Tower Records, Mute Records, Tender Prey Management), and whilst in her early twenties, she took what she thought would be a brief trip around the globe, but it ended up lasting two and half years.

During that journey she experienced an epiphany when another world opened up to her – “a world which had always been there for me, but which I had forgotten about”. That world was the inspiration behind the music of Pantaleimon.

Andria creates simple, haunting and beautiful music, somewhere between meditative and psychedelic. Her first album, Trees Hold Time, was released in 1999 and was directly inspired by the experiences during her first travels.

Her second album, Mercy Oceans, was released late in 2007. The space between the two albums was filled with the practice and teaching of yoga and meditation. Andria says, “After Trees Hold Time I felt I had nothing else to give to the world musically, but then in 2005 the floodgates opened and out of that came the material for Cloudburst and Mercy Oceans. All the words on Mercy Oceans came to me in one long stream of consciousness, I then had to look at the mass of words and decipher the individual songs. The music came in a similar way”.

“...the most important thing about Mercy Oceans is the unmistakable magic that Andria has tapped into. I kept feeling a genuine healing presence throughout the album, like an unconditional love felt after a hard cry. This feeling completely overwhelms me every time I listen to the track "We Love", which might just be the most beautiful piece of mystical music I have ever heard (sitting right next to This Mortal Coil's cover of Song to the Siren and Psychic TV's The Orchids). It seems that songs like these could only emerge from a soul that has been through a great deal of pain, only to emerge stronger and more resilient than ever. This is completely real and powerful music that can change and heal. The simplicity is monumental and the intent is strong.” – Foxy Digitalis

continued >>