Panchiko, Dead Calm - 5/12/26 - Fresno, CA - Tioga Sequoia

It was one of those perfect Fresno spring evenings, warm but not hot, a light breeze, no humidity, just perfect. And Panchiko packed the house at Tioga Sequoia for their second show in 4 days (the first one sold out instantaneously so they booked a second). Fresno’s version of Tightwad Hill had some attendees as well, with 10-15 people enjoying the show from the top of the spiral garage across the street.

Dressed in a #42 Pogba Man United jersey and singing into a mic painted in the Irish tricolour, Dead Calm got the night started with guitar forward, slowed down emo tunes... at least that's how I would describe them... mixed in with pop punk classics Dammit by Blink and My Own Worst Enemy by Lit. At the end of a long tour, he told us from the start that his voice was going, and unfortunately it was mostly gone by the end of the show. That didn’t stop him from getting a very last bit that he could get out of it though and giving us a high energy performance.

Panchiko, a quintet from England, delivered layered soundscapes to an eager crowd. Fresno LOVES this band. The group had three guitarists, and each guitarist had a set of keys or a mixer in front of them, and they used all available methods of creating sound, resulting in vibrant soundscapes that wrapped themselves around you. They combined the keys and guitars with effects and bass and drums and all their other sound machines in delightful, rich songs.

The singer has a rich voice when he speaks, and a plaintive voice when he sings, reminiscent of Thom Yorke. As a whole, they have very subdued stage presence, but this is necessitated by the nature of their music. It’s hard to be jumping and dancing around stage when you need to be playing a guitar, keys, and manipulating your guitar pedals at the same time.

Most songs feature different sounds doing their own thing and then coming together into a crescendo. They worked electronic aspects into a lof their work, from robotic beeps and boops to industrial sounds to distorted voices to a gradually-increasing-in-pitch jet engine similar to Contact by Daft Punk. You can close your eyes and get lost in the sound, as the waves crash over you like you’re a rock on the coast and the frequencies of the waves are syncing and maximizing right when they hit you. They’re cut from the same sonic-storm-chasing cloth as The Edge, Trey Anastasio, and Jonny Greenwood, seemingly always looking for new combinations of frequencies and vibrations.