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“Mercy Oceans is focused, crafting
meditative arrangements from skeletal acoustics and gentle haunting
vocals. It exists in a spiritual hinterland, dancing in the half-light
before dawn; a magical time between waking and sleeping.”
– Wire
“Deliberately paced, the songs on Mercy
Oceans sometimes sound as if they are being sung for the
first time, for the listener alone. High Star shimmers
brightly, with Degens’ slow vibrato intertwining magically
with Isobel Campbell’s cello amid a trembling drone, the
same harmonic tone which gives Born Into You and Raw
Heart the timeless stamp of gently passionate love songs
which are simultaneously private and shared willingly with the
outside world.
Drifting in the immersive world of Pantaleimon
can be disconcerting though. When the album finishes and workaday
normality returns, it somehow seems so much more appealing to
play the record over instead, and be stolen away once more.”
– Plan B
2007 also brought praise for the four track EP
Cloudburst:
“…the sparse clarity of her music
as Pantaleimon seems to exist in its own unique, indefinable space.
Three of these four tracks are crystalline instrumentals played
on Appalachian dulcimer and bouzouki with a brittle, graceful
sense of mood and spatial atmosphere. This is a kind of minimalist
instrumental folk with spiritual undertones. The fourth track,
Numinosum, is sung by Degens with a quietly centered
intensity, somewhere between love song and devotional mantra,
with a sedate, droning backing. Its vivid simplicity is, in its
own quiet way, quite stunning.” – Wire
Andria has made guest appearances with the band
Wire (live at the Clapham Grand), Dirty Three (Andria appears on
Horse Stories), and with Current 93 (Black Ships Ate
The Sky). Pantaleimon have also contributed music to Cam Archer's
film Wild Tigers I Have Known, Susan Stenger’s (Band
of Susans) Soundtrack For An Exhibition, and projects by
Irr. App. (Ext.), Nurse With Wound and Marc Pilley's Hobotalk.
Electronic Voice Phenomenon voted Pantaleimon’s
We Love video by Cam Archer as their ‘Video of the
Week’.
Pantaleimon have not played live very often,
but they have been honoured to play shows with Antony & the
Johnsons, Baby Dee, SIx Organs Of Admittance, Current 93, 16 Horsepower,
Matt Sweeney and Bonnie "Prince" Billy.
June 2008 sees the release of Heart of the
Sun, featuring remixes of all the songs from Mercy Oceans
by artists such as Andrew WK, Stephen O’Malley, CarterTutti
and Fovea Hex as well as many others. Heart of the Sun
also includes four new tracks that have never been heard before,
one of which is a collaboration with the band Strings of Consciousness.
Also, a new limited edition CD EP will also be released, entitled
Tall Trees, which will be available from Abaton Book Company:
www.myspace.com/abatonbookcompany
• www.abatonbookcompany.us/talltrees.html
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