The Panoply Academy

Presented in reverse chronological order, even the sequence is representative of the band’s de facto “nothing good ever comes easy” work ethic. The Panoply Academy spent the better part of a decade as central Indiana’s most challenging & compelling bands. Going through a handful of member – and thus slight name – changes, the Panoply Academy have infected basements across the country over and over again having begrudgingly drawn comparisons to Pere Ubu, Sonic Youth, U.S. Maple, Brainiac and from time to time even Wire with an attention span. The one thread running through all of the comparisons is that the band is difficult to pin down. Experimental never exactly described Sonic Youth, and post-punk wasn’t what Wire was truly about. The fact is – like these other bands – Panoply does not fit anywhere. As the saying goes, they defy categorization.

Forged during the tape loop revolution, the Academy was initiated as five longtime friends from widely disparate musical backgrounds threw out the rule book. As with many bands of their era, their best recorded works have been scattered in the global wind not in the form of proper albums (which have included three full-lengths and an EP to date), but rather in the form of singles, cover tunes on tribute albums and countless compilation tracks. Everything Here Was Built to Break includes each and every one of those non-album tracks that the Panoply Academy has released since its inception in 1996, from every wave of their career (including the Glee Club, Corps of Engineers and Legionnaires), including every rare, out of print single and compilation track. Arguably even more important than all these songs finally collected together, Everything Here Was Built to Break begins with the fabled “lost album” – the five songs recorded during their last session in 2001. Three of these have never been released, while the other two come from perhaps one of the last perfect 7″es (“Nocturnally Yours” / “Diurnally Yours”). Recorded to a 1″ 6-track (as two of the eight tracks just happened to be malfunctioning that week) by LonPaul Ellrich (Marmoset, June Panic’s Silver Sound), these songs finally captured the band’s live energy that made them the fan favorite for every young scrapper who has been lucky enough to see them perform on their dozen tours across the US between 1996 and 2001 in which they played every sweaty basement DIY club in the midwest and on both coasts. This session included the following line-up: Darin Glenn (vocals, samples, guitar), Nick Quagliara (bass, piano), Pete Schreiner (drums, trumpet) and Marty Sprowles (guitar). The Panoply Academy’s members have played in other bands of note: Nick Quagliara (Turn Pale), Pete Schreiner (Songs: Ohia/Magnolia Electric Co., The Coke Dares, Scout Niblett, Thousand Arrows), Marty Sprowles (Turn Pale), Ryan Hicks (Measles Mumps Rubella, El Guapo), and Bekkah Walker (The Drop Science).

“The Panoply Academy have chosen a promising stylistic platform – vintage avant-kookiness, heavy influence from mid-period Pere Ubu’s particular synthesis of Beefheart’s Cubist Delta Blues, Yoko Ono’s arch taffy-pill vocals, and England’s more polemic post-prog extremism a la Henry Cow. And MX-80’s recension of related materials.”

– Your Flesh