PANTALEIMON

Andria Degens (born 1968) is a singer song-writer, multi-instrumentalist, and composer who has been creating music as Pantaleimon since 1999. She plays guitar, keyboards, Indian harmonium, Appalachian dulcimer, and utilises samples, field recordings and voice. 

The first Pantaleimon album "Trees Hold Time" established her in the alternative music scene with hauntingly beautiful soundscapes and meditative sonic tapestries. 

Over the next few years, she released several more albums including the more song based "Mercy Oceans" (2001), the remix album “Heart of the Sun" (2004) - featuring remixes by Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Stephen O’Malley - and EP “Tall Trees”(2008). 

In 2013 came the psych-folk album "The Butterfly Ate The Pearl", which featured Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, James Blackshaw, and was co-produced with Hugo Race (Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds). This album received wide recognition in the press and media, especially in the USA. 

Andria took some space and time away from music for personal reasons after the making of “The Butterfly Ate The Pearl”. 

She relocated to Dartmoor, Devon in 2021 and continued to write and record.

And while Pantaleimon's signature sound has remained true, her recent Appalachian dulcimer instrumentals, ‘The Conversation' and ‘To The In Between' from the latest album “ Up With The Moon” (2024) reveal a refined return to the minimalism of her earlier works.

Always open to collaboration Andria is presently involved in numerous up coming projects and further Pantaleimon releases.

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Pantaleimon's first album, Trees Hold Time (1999), from the opening tone of Bowing and Parting, to the pure sound of the Appalachian dulcimer on Insignificant Dance, reveals how Pantaleimon’s sound rises, as if from an ever-present dawn. This debut was recorded and mixed by Christoph Heeman at his studio in Aachen, Germany.

The follow-up EP, Cloudburst (2005) (recorded at the Diving Bell Lounge in Glasgow) presented four atmospheric tracks, spanning a single day and culminating in the drone-steeped haunting invocations of Numinosum, a track referencing involuntary mystical experiences. 

Mercy Oceans is the second studio album from Pantaleimon, arriving in 2007, featuring Isobel Campbell, Baby Dee, Keith Wood (Hush Arbors) and John Contreras. Trees Hold Time was mainly instrumental, while the second sees Andria delivering honest shimmering vocals that explore joy and a reverence for life and nature. A wave of collaborators were inspired to remix these tracks, which produced the companion album The Heart of the Sun (2008). Featured remixers, such as Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter, Stephen O’Malley, Andrew WK, and Fovea Hex' Clodagh Simonds, pushed the songs into wilder ambient shapes. Time-bending as the tracks rise, dissolve and reconfigure as if pulled by Spring tides.  

A second EP, Tall Trees (2008) featuring Michael Tanner of Plinth and Nick Palmer of Directorsound. The title track Tall Trees emerges as a confession of love to nature itself. The stand-out track from the EP is Sing Night Swallow, representing Pantaleimon at its dream-core best, with softly swooning harmonics, and elevating lyrics that glide in and out of view.

Followers of Pantaleimon had to wait until 2013 for the fourth full studio album – The Butterfly Ate the Pearl. Andria tracked, recorded and edited all the wav.files received from her collaborators on Protools in her Butterfly Cellar Studio (basically a damp dark basement) in Hastings, and then mixed the entire album with Hugo Race in Southern Italy at Cosabeat Studios. This release captured an expansive, more psychedelic sound palette than Pantaleimon had previously achieved. With collaborators, James Blackshaw on guitar, Robin Casinader on violin, Jay Darlington (Kula Shaker, Oasis, Magic Bus) on keyboards, Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince Billy) delivering spoken word, Steve Finnerty (Alabama 3) on electric guitar, Otto Hauser (Vetiver) on drums, Dan Price on bass and Paul Phillips on slide guitar. And with sound engineer Franco Naddei and co-producer Hugo Race (The Wreckery, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) Andria's core Pantaleimon sound was amplified and augmented. The result is panoramic with a song sequence that draws us further and deeper into a liminal world.

Andria produced the official Pantaleimon videos with American animator and director Eric Leiser on her video singles If I (Was) and Ember, and with Chilean director Enrique Verdugo on Another World.

Pantaleimon have performed live, most notably at Patti Smith’s Meltdown, supporting Anohni and the Johnsons at the QEH; Sinsal Festival, Vigo, Spain playing on the bill with Lightening Bolt; played support for Bonnie Prince Billy at The Queens Hall in Edinburgh; supported 16 Horsepower at The Borderline, London ; toured with Current 93 playing at The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco; played headline with James Blackshaw on guitar at La Apolo, Barcelona, Spain.

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Besides her work as Pantaleimon, Andria has been actively involved with a number of projects, contributing to a wide variety of artists work as vocalist, performer, composer, narrator and co-writer.

Most notable contributions: music for Susan Stenger’s ‘Soundtrack for an Exhibition’ at the Musée Art Contemporain, Lyon, in 2006 / Forma / featured on day 31/32 of the exhibition. Music for the feature film Wild Tigers I Have Known, the 2006 début film by New York director Cam Archer, produced by Gus Van Sant and officially selected for the Sundance Film Festival.  Other contributions include; provided narration for a series of short films by Cam Archer The Dead Letters featured in Cinemad; vocalist on the Dirty Three’s Horse Stories with Warren Ellis on the track ‘Horse’; appears on X-TG Desertshore/The Final Report. 

Between 1996 – 2009 Andria is credited on many Current 93 and Durtro releases collaborating with her then husband David Tibet. She performs a beautiful stripped-backed version of ‘Idumea’ composed on Appalachian dulcimer for the Current 93 album ‘Black Ships Ate The Sky’. Since parting ways in 2012 Andria and David never worked together again, but remain amicable. 

Other notable appearances and collaborations: playing harmonium on the track Heat on Hugo Race’s ‘Between Hemispheres’ album. There are also collaborations with the band’s Strings of Consciousness on 'From Beyond Love' and with Lüüp on the epic 'Meadow Rituals' album.

More recently in 2021 she appears on Marc Pilley’s Arksong album ‘Ruin Valley Rising’ and she is guest vocalist on the track 'One Kind'.