For those who found Lee Bannon’s Ninja Tune debut, Alternate / Endings, jolting for its eradication of his backpack rap past for the strobe lights and laser show of junglist meditations, please take a seat.
For now, he is still Lee Bannon, the ADHD-producer hellbent on exploring every revelatory spark to its final tinge. But as expressed in the note above, Pattern of Excel shall be his final record under the moniker. He soon will transform into ¬b (typed alt key+l and b), which for him is too be understood as “not bannon.” The transformation is one of utilitarian measure, rather than actively destroy his namesake to the head scratches of his foundational fans, he chose to pivot because “the current works have to such a [sic] extreme that it must have its own pulse without the stigma of past work or genre.” Merited.
Which brings us to “Disneµ Girls”, the second single as capricious compliment to lead single “Artificial Stasis”. Where the first single was a watery experiment in nautical ambient, a siren song set to field recordings of a city loft photo shoot, “Disneµ Girls” is not quite Badalamentian twang or Ducktailsian exotica, but the meter oscillates on the lines. It suggests there is no single on Pattern of Excel, there is something greater at play that we’ll understand in time. For now all we have is the word “departure” and an alternative moniker.
¬b’s Pattern of Excel is out July 10 on Ninja Tune.
