Indie rock fans typically hold two contradictory beliefs about the music industry — it’s filled with clueless idiots who are somehow also evil masterminds, sublimating success from subterfuge alone. Consider the curious case of Panchiko, which allowed for the possibility of both to be true — a CD-R of their supposed 4-song demo D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L was supposedly uploaded to YouTube by a supposed 4Chan user in 2016, who supposedly found it in a Nottingham thrift store after being drawn in by the typeface and manga image on its cover. Supposedly, it was from the year 2000 and its alluringly degraded audio was supposedly the result of something called “disc rot,” a term that almost no one had heard of before, even when chillwave made audio degradation de rigueur. And supposedly, it contained no contact information besides the first names of the people who made it, and no one else claimed to have another copy.
As D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L began to circulate online and achieve an almost legendary status in spite of — and more likely, because of — its mystery, some questioned whether they were actually a major label’s astroturfed attempt at virality, or even the work of a CIA operative. As with most supposed hoaxes being debated on Discord, Reddit, and 4Chan during the 2010s, many assumed that Death Grips were involved in some way.
When the band turned out to be a couple of genial, middle-aged blokes who’d more or less quit music entirely after their demos fell on deaf ears, the actual members of Panchiko — frontman Owain, guitarist/producer Andy and “charisma/bass-ish guy” Shaun, still no last names — couldn’t help but be let down as well. “I was as disappointed as the rest of the Panchiko fans when I found out I wasn’t a member of Death Grips,” Andy quips.
In the pockets of music fandom that considers themselves “deeply online” — Rate Your Music, The Needle Drop, Album Of The Year, Reddit, and such — Panchiko’s new album Failed At Math(s) is one of 2023’s most anticipated releases. For those on the outside, Panchiko likely still remain as much of an obscurity as they were in 2000. This isn’t a situation like American Football or Duster, where a modestly successful indie artist returns after a long hiatus to a level of acclaim and influence exponentially bigger than anything they experienced in their heyday; they at least were signed to respected indie labels back in the late ’90s and its primary members continued to make widely available music in the time since.
Meanwhile, the startling dissonance between Panchiko’s public presence and sudden popularity usually leads to accusations of being an industry plant with secretly rich parents. During their original run, Panchiko’s live audience often consisted of the bar staff, other bands on the bill, and almost nobody who wasn’t being paid to be there. When they started playing real gigs at the end of 2021, they immediately did so in 400-1000 capacity rooms in the UK and the US. Spotify statistics are an imperfect metric for assessing real-life impact and almost certainly a pox on artistic discourse, but it’s a metric all the same and Panchiko currently have about 680,000 monthly listeners. For perspective, that’s somehow about 100,000 more than, say, Joyce Manor or Wednesday.
So is Panchiko a testament to meritocracy, that great music can overcome any number of obstacles to reach the audience it deserves? Or are they proof of just how much is left to chance? Just look at the first paragraph again and imagine if Panchiko had a landscape photo on its cover or if they were from Norfolk instead of Nottingham, or if a random Goodwill hunter found their demo as opposed to a true poster with a 4Chan account and a CD burner. When considering all of the bands who’ve plugged away for years without getting anywhere near as much traction, Panchiko understandably harbor a kind of survivor’s guilt. “It feels like we accidentally cheated, it is a bit weird to go from zero to 1000 in 20-odd years,” Andy explains. “There’s a bit of imposter syndrome, but it’s not even a syndrome.”
This is where Failed At Math(s) comes in, an attempt to affirm Panchiko as a legitimized, ongoing artistic endeavor rather than an internet curiosity. Though the beneficiary of nearly two decades of improved recording technology and a swell of popular demand, Failed at Math(s) makes for a logical extension of D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L — toggling between twitchy electronic pop, soaring Britrock and block-rockin’ beats, with a newfound dedication pacing and sequencing.
“I think I got into a Radiohead rut for 20 years,” Andy muses, and like many university-aged musicians in the late ’90s, Panchiko were — and still are — heavily influenced by the bionic rock of OK Computer and also recombinant UK tricksters like Super Furry Animals and Beta Band. Yet, while much of the sampledelic crate-digging of that time comes off as naive and dated in an era where genre-hopping indie artists skew more towards pop and hip-hop, Panchiko’s guileless approach unwittingly prepared them to sound ahead of the curve. The patchwork production of D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L may have been far too raw for Y2k, yet it’s perfectly in line with the early work of Alex G and Car Seat Headrest, both of whom Owain credits with rejuvenating his interest in contemporary indie rock. Similarly, though he’s self-deprecating about his previous lyrical approach — “back then it was about relationships or nobody likes you, or some people like you, that person is being a knob head” — the wandering melodies and twinkling guitars allowed Panchiko to be grandfathered as honorary Midwest emo.
Owain feels the perspective has matured on Failed At Math(s) — “Why am I here? How did I get here? I’m a bit tired…but maybe I should hope a bit more.” Still, most of Panchiko’s fanbase skews nearly half their age — kids who notice that Jenna Ortega followed them on Instagram, artists that listened to D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L in their teens. Their recent tours have been supported by 2020s cult favorites like Horse Jumper Of Love, Julie, They Are Gutting A Body Of Water, and Computer Wife, all of whom have a significant following in their own right. “They can do bigger shows than the ones they’re doing with us, but they wanted to play with us,” Owain boasts. “The drummer Dylan from Julie said, ‘I listened to this song in high school’ and I was blown away.”
Despite their success, Panchiko remain an odd proposition in the industry. They’re a band that amassed a substantial fanbase without any sort of promotion, touring, or label backing, yet they’re still a couple of Brits in their 40s who don’t seem bent on constructing a revenge fantasy to rectify their earlier failures. “I was personally quite naive at that age,” Owain explains. “Back then, if you read about the music industry, there might be a few magazines that teach you about how A&Rs and demos work. Maybe I had this belief that someone is gonna sign you and look after you, and they’re gonna go, well done!” The others agree that Panchiko were equally fueled by confidence in their art and insecurity about their ability to make something of it. “We just needed someone to give a shit,” Shaun bluntly states, and though the 30 CD-Rs they sent out were largely ignored, the band do recall getting a nibble of interest from Fierce Panda, a London-based indie that launched mid-’90s it-bands like Ash and the Bluetones and also released Coldplay’s first charting single in the UK. “They were interested but we didn’t follow up going to London, like…oh do you have to do that?” Owain laughs. “London’s 100 miles away,” Andy deadpans.
After their first US tour, Owain recalls that Panchiko were approached by a handful of indie labels, some of which were more accurately described as “offshoots of majors.” But even if only to provide a seal of approval to Failed At Math(s), the band looked at the offers and asked, “Do we even really need you?” (“Is that a bad thing to say, published?,” Owain shrugs). Yet their decision to self-release was more practical than ethical. Failed At Math(s) came together quickly – eight songs, some of which are refurbished from their Ferric Oxide: Demos 1997-2001 compilation, clocking in at less than a half hour. “It gets really messy with people having all these opinions and we only had a certain amount of time because we had to do shows,” Andy says. “So if we go down the more trad label route, it would be months and months of painful negotiation.”
Besides, Panchiko’s entire continued existence is due to the band tending to their own administrative tasks. After the online lurker-sleuths narrowed down their search to people named Owain in Nottingham, one sent a message to a defunct Facebook page that hadn’t been updated in nine years – “Hello, you’ll probably never read this, but are you the lead singer of Panchiko?’” Had Owain lived in any other city or turned off his Facebook notifications, we might still be wondering if MC Ride was somehow responsible for “Kicking Cars.” “From day one, we tried to respond to anyone who messaged us, we’re not a massive band and it’s just amazing how much you like our music. I’ve got time to talk,” Owain says. Then again, success has changed the tenor of these conversations – “we get loads of people saying, ‘Can you give Jenna Ortega a message for me?’”