Panchiko

On July 21st, 2016, a user on 4chan’s /mu/ board posted a photo of a demo CD they’d discovered in an Oxfam charity store in Nottingham, UK: titled D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L, purportedly released in 2000. The listener uploaded the ripped audio to file-sharing sites, and later YouTube, where it began circulating around web forums. A cult of fans banded together to solve the origin story of the mysterious disc, until eventually a long defunct local band from Nottingham who called themselves Panchiko discovered their 1998 album (limited to 30 copies) had spread virally across the internet 18 years later.

By popular demand Panchiko reunited touring the music of D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L to sold out audiences across the US and UK in 2022 and will self-release a new LP titled Failed at Math(s) on May 5 2023 followed by an expanded US tour.

Weatherday is the noise-pop project of the mononymous Swedish artist Sputnik. While they have also found success with their side project, Lola's Pocket PC, it is their cult-acclaimed album Come in that has garnered them a large and dedicated following through its raucous musical universe and serpentine sparklepunk stylings. Often heralded as an achievement of lo-fi bedroom pop tangled with threads of emo and DIY, Come in is better described, in its author’s own words, as a “life goal.”

The initial spark that ignited the fiery, heated debut from Weatherday originated from Sputnik’s desire to write, perform, and produce a record all on their own, from the ground up. Starting in 2014-2015, their preliminary attempts at what would eventually become Come in first materialized as a shoegaze EP, and then a dream-pop meets chamber-pop LP. Ever the perfectionist though, Sputnik wasn’t satisfied with the results and deleted the releases without a trace, finally deciding to set out in the direction of something more akin to their longtime influences of emo and its various subgenres.
 

After two years of tinkering in this stylistic sweetspot, Sputnik settled on the eleven knotted, maximal tracks that comprise Come in. From the caustic, harsh peaks of “Sleep in while you’re doing your best” to the soothing piano-laden passages of “Embarrassing paintings” and experimental, granular coda of “Water dreamer the same,” the range of Weatherday’s debut is doubtlessly a product of an artist who refuses to compromise a single shred of their vision.