In recent years it seems South America has developed a propensity to produce fantastic psychedelic folk (wilderness psychedelia) acts. This includes artists such as Ø+yn, Montibus Communitas, and Pan Del Indio. The latter of these bands recently released a fantastic live performance showcasing this wild experimentalism, broadcasting on the Sale Productions YouTube channel.
As far as my understanding goes, Pan Del Indio is the running project of Federico Fossati, an Argentinian instrument maker whom specialises in areophones such as flutes. Pan Del Indio have released three albums, all of which are slightly different, and are of a more meditational tone than the performance exhibited here.
Whilst not fast-paced, the performance is certainly not serene either. An interesting confluence of flavours arises - the traditionally Indian instruments of the dirluba and shruti box being used to construct a distinctly South American mood. For me, the dirubla is the focal point - rich and sombre, not often associated with psychedelic music, amongst the basal drone of the didgeridoo and shruti box. This is what makes the recording so interesting, the mixture of several not often heard instruments coming together to create some genuinely stimulating folk psychedelia.
The leads me into the real importance of this post - to somewhat introduce a new regular written feature of the blog. In the coming months, I plan to start examining different and unusual instruments from around the world, looking at their psychedelic usage and their background. In doing this I hope to further one of the blog's main aims to help people reassess what they do and do not consider to be psychedelic, encouraging people to both listen to, and perform with, more interesting sonic textures. Look out for the first post soon!
Review written by Daniel Sharman
