Nothing and All at Once is the debut album from New Delhi electronica producer Jay Pei in his Panelia guise. Featuring a broad but seamless tapestry of electronica, beats and breaks, often with widescreen cinematic vibes, it veers from driving grooves to ambient atmospheres that seem marinated in leftfield 90s sounds.
Tipped for great things by the likes of Mixmag Asia, Pei is hardly a newcomer to the electronica scene, having already released a good number of EPs in his own name. However, under his Panelia moniker, he has mined the sounds of maverick producers from just before the dawn of the Millennium, such as Future Sound of London, Eat Static and drum and bass pioneers like Origin Unknown, that will no doubt trigger waves of nostalgia for many an aging raver – and will quite possibly encourage those who weren’t there to investigate what they missed.
Beginning with ambient swirling of the title track, Nothing and All at Once builds through the breezy up-tempo electronica of “As I Walk Towards You” and the industrial techno vibes of “Obey the Machine” before exploding into the head banging and rump shaking drum and bass of “Voice of Reason” and then finally fading out with the atmospheric trip hop of “Chaos Becoming Cathartic”. Along the way, Pei brings in atmospheric and cinematic excursions like “The Dawn After”, which is reminiscent of Vangelis’ Bladerunner soundtrack and the claustrophobic “Ghost from the Past”, that add interesting flourishes to his musical narrative.
Nothing and All at Once is a fine homage to a time when electronic music was the new frontier in modern sounds. However, Pei seems happy to leave things at that without feeling the need to take things into new territories. It’s, therefore, to be hoped that he is more comfortable with forging ahead with additional flavours and grooves that reflect a new world in the future.
