Nikita von Tiraspol on Panta Rex’s release on his label Kontrapunkt:

»Panta Rex was introduced to me due to his output on Noorden. When I moved to Cologne I was looking for people to start doing music with and Alex from Noorden introduced me to him. Soon he started to show me more of his music.


I instantly felt in love with ›Dyade‹ which is a beautiful song to end a set with that lasted the whole night and is ending when the sun is already shining again. By the way the working title of this beautiful song was dtf-uia. ›Youth in the 90s‹ shows you where Panta Rex got his musical background from and it is a homage back to the golden times after the fall of the wall and all the never ending parties.
 ›Critter‹ is a club hit with a long build-up and a drop that is unique in its own way, that lets you expect something different and it is also hitting very hard.
 ›Lares‹ in the end is one of those songs that feels like an old Workshop record. House at its best and with lyrics brought onto point.«

Cologne-based producer Panta Rex returns to Noorden presenting his first long-player »LP 1«. The 9 tracks show a broad variety of modular drums and vibrant melodies shifting between meditative melancholic arpeggios, subtle textures of sparse cut-up samples, and emotional daybreak synths lines.

Written and produced in a forced distance to the dance floor »LP1« opens up a winding path of miscellaneous up- and downtempos leading you deeper into the musical cosmos of Panta.

Since its inception in October 2011, Noorden has aimed at crafting time-proof pieces of sound, easing its audience in a continuously shape-shifting vortex of abstract-leaning programmings and genre-unbound grooves, faux-organic folds and barrages of borderline seditious versatility. Iconoclastic by nature, the label celebrates its tenth anniversary with this eleven-track Compilation, gathering a cast of close friends and collaborators who have all made their contribution in the rise and development of Noorden as an idiosyncratic musical vessel.

Spanning all styles electronic, from techno to ambient music, via all kinds of off-piste oddities, house-y, kosmische, spacious or claustrophobic, epic-sized and intimate, »NOO11—21« captures a widescreen snapshot of the label’s immediate reality, and exhibits its role as a bold-minded hub for like-minded artists, each of whom have been cutting their own path of differentiation in a world increasingly drawn towards uniformity and obedience to the standard in force.

400 days after the original release of Orion Moustache’s »EP02«, four remixes by KYOKA (Berlin), RED ON (Nuremberg), PANTA REX (Cologne), and WHITE AFGHANI (Hamburg) have been released.

Following up to his debut mini-album »Antennen« issued last year on Noorden, fellow Cologne-based producer Panta Rex returns to the label with »Lefty«, his sophomore three-track delivery which finds him scoping out the confines between photophobic modular techno, subsheavy traction and AI-operated melodicism.

True to the intricate engineering of his first compositions, Panta Rex expands his sonic logos to even broader horizons of -altered- functionality. Most definitely a piece of club-oriented abstr-activism though offering vaster sequences and audio expanses to perambulate your mind within, »Lefty« is a mille-feuille of textural ambiguities, secret rooms and corridors – piecing together galloping dynamics with bleepy opaqueness as it leaves your mind out of focus all the way through to a steely, slo-burning yet highly choreographic finale.

Veering off to a more aqueous, dubby state of mind, B1 »Swerve« draws the loud, muffled kicks and FX-drenched synth stabs for a much immersive ride in the deep, shrouded in organic envelopes and overlapping layers of intriguing sonic minutiae. Closing cut “Dizz” wraps it up on a more breaksy note with its contrasted ballet of wistful strings, sliced-and-diced drumwork and dissonant chimes opening us to a heightened, 90s-informed apex of sorts, where Panta Rex’s subtle touch and widescreen vision bloom all the more unreservedly.

Detroit, Brighton, Stuttgart – if you connect Panta Rex’ musically relevant sites on a world map, the resulting line seems rather straight.

Apart from playing the violin in various ensembles for several years, he had a growing fascination for electronic music, beginning in the mid-nineties with classical Techno from Detroit followed by the rather bleepy and minimal sound of the UK around the turn of the millennium. A few years at art school digging all kinds of music went by until Panta Rex got to know the people behind Philpot in the late 2000s and fell in love with the label’s releases immediately. During this time he started producing electronic music in addition to his work as a DJ.

He is strongly inspired by the vibe of his artistic idols which can certainly be heard on his debut mini-album »Antennen«. Somewhere between dreamy Ambient, loungy Electronica, psychedelic House and playful Techno, the six tracks take their time to develop and unfold. Perfect for getting into the right mood – be it on the dance floor or on a hike through forests and meadows.