Panteros666
First starting beat-making from his student room, Panteros666 now speculates society’s “religious connection with Internet and digital life” through virtual multi-media.
If we start by you telling us a bit about your background and where you’re from.
Hello Coeval! I was born and raised in the North of France, 400 meters away from the Belgian border. My background is pretty average: middle-class but with too many financial struggles in the family to feel safe lol. My grandfather was a local architect with a very personal, modernist, brutalist style, he’s the one who introduced me to modern art and, even more so, to creative courage.
I have read that you went to a Jazz school. There’s something quite beautiful to me about a school dedicated to jazz. Did you enjoy it?
Mmhh yes and no! I signed up to Jazz drumming school because I was really into 70s psychedelic bands like Yes, Van der Graaf Generator or King Crimson. I wanted to reach their level of technicality and musical madness. Few months in and I realised that this era was dead forever and that I did not want to hang out with jazz musicians.
““This dream is long gone, and I wanted to rejuvenate it with a personal Instagram fashion ravey Matrix aesthetic.””
But then you made a sudden switch from jazz and bought a drumbox. What made you decide to move on from jazz and focus on producing dance music?
I think deep inside I wanted to be part of something new, not imitate what elders did better than our generation, do something experimental, DIY, feel like a weird pioneer. I had explored everything in drumming from Death metal to Bossa Nova and got totally bored haha. I passed a preppy exam and started a Political Science degree. Overnight I found myself drum-less. The need to create music became really urgent and I bought a €27 random groovebox on eBay. I made my first computer assisted beats in my tiny student bedroom and since then I’ve never stopped.
What first initiated your fascination with creating transgenic sonic landscapes?
I mainly listen to club music or ambient now. I use music to either feel energy or relax. I’m rarely in the mood for pop to be honest. I’m trying to! Listening to ambient puts you in a state of otherworldly focus that I can’t find elsewhere. It shuts you off from the real world. It’s calm and weird like a human mind maybe. I love playing with sonic textures, like a painter plays with textures to unsettle people. Also, electronic transgenic sounds work as fertilisers for our imagination. They make us picture abstract digi-physical worlds. It’s magnificent when paired with 3D art. But sometimes EXPE sonic landscapes gets too niche, emotionless and depressingly deep, it’s hit or miss.
So, congratulations on your new video! What first inspired the aesthetic and concept for this? Can you tell me a bit about the artistic development behind it?
I remember my first experiences on Internet, I felt like I was diving into an ocean of freedom and endless possibilities. I was 200% optimistic. I believed online sub-cultures would lead on to create a new form of humanity and new political organisations like direct democracy or full transparency. But the recent development has shown that the former freedom-led citizen web has been replaced by platform capitalism, the rise of the alt right and the most extreme form of unbridled neoliberalism ever created. It’s a bit of a cold shower for me. And we all signed up for this!
This critical thinking made me feel nostalgic about the Y2K era (2000s), where digital technologies were supposed to help humans feel more connected to each other and to nature. This dream is long gone, and I wanted to rejuvenate it with a personal Instagram fashion ravey Matrix aesthetic.
The video begins with a display of the book ‘Digimagic Invocation: Secrets of the AER_OS’. What does this book symbolise?
The AER_OS are digital creatures I created to feel less alone in this alienating digi-physical world. They can be anything I want, friends, enemies, rave partners, gifs for my stories, they are perfect because they are non-human and digitally fluid unlike me. I used an invocation book because I wanted to play with the idea that we now have an almost religious connection with Internet and digital life. Apps are white magic! When you get a DM from someone you’re into it’s a mini miracle, no? When you feel anxiety over the absence of notification the relief caused by a message is the new equivalent of a prayer to an omniscient being. I’m not into occult sciences because what Internet is doing to us is more paranormal and weird! AER_OS will be my guides to explore digital worlds and liberate them from their troubles.
One of the central figures of the music video is this floating green creature, that also features as a filter. Can you introduce us?
Here’s the first AER_OS! This one is cheeky and hard to catch. We designed it with Flufflord and Ines Alpha. We are all playing a game and the game field extends from our physical daily life to apps. This AER_OS is, I hope, a new form of xenogender non-physical AR player who will make this game more exciting I hope.
You are very embedded in internet-based work and create work across many different digital realms - you make websites, you do video editing and more! Which area do you creatively relate to the most?
My favourite is music! But I love creating all-encompassing UNIV3RSES. This is what I want to find in music, escape mechanisms, alternative worlds, fictional spaces. Music changes you, it makes you feel more alive. Video editing is a lot of fun too but it’s less live! Teaming with Ines Alpha to create 3D project is great because there is so much freedom in 3D design that you can create more fantastic versions of reality, it’s in many ways like music.
Do you see your work in these different areas as artistically interweaved or separate?
Definitely interweaved. When I’m writing music, my mind naturally imagines what visual landscapes needs to go with it.
If Panteros666 designed the sonic landscape of 2021, what would this sound like?
Every sonic landscape on Ines Alpha’s 3D make up! Or my forthcoming EP on Ultra ;)
CATCH ME IRL exclusive and limited t-shirt realised in collaboration with Panteros666 designed by @sekta_bayres
courtesy PANTEROS666
interview KATE BISHOP
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