San Francisco based band, Panic Is Perfect, came to be in a very roundabout way. Founders, Jeremy Belzer and Mike Hoffman actually formed the project in Southern India by way of travel throughout their relative lives from Kansas City, Portland, Los Angeles, Ghana, Thailand, Korea, China, India eventually settling in the Bay Area and completing the 5-piece live band with the addition of Ty Parker on drums, Joey Hassid on synths, and David Monzon on guitar.
Jeremy chased the arts and was awarded a scholarship to CalArts taking 1st place in a nationwide painting competition. He spent nights listening to records in the library and wound up majoring in Music Composition.
After college, he decided to take to the world with his laptop, guitar and microphone and wrote and recorded hundreds of songs while living in the jungles of Thailand, seeking higher consciousness in India, and sweating in tiny apartments in Korea and China.
Mike, a drummer since the age of 10, dropped out after his first year of music school to travel to West Africa and study with a Master tribal drummer in rural Ghana. Mike played heavily in the local African and Afro-pop scene upon returning home, later moving to LA to finish his education at CalArts.
It was there that he was turned on to writing and producing music, making his first solo album on an 8-track tape recorder.Music became the driver and underneath their syncopated, multi-layered rhythmic arrangements, Panic Is Perfect writes simple indie pop songs with meaningful lyrics and melodies that stay with you long after the songs end.
Sharing vocals, Mike and Jeremy sway the listener in and out of catchy vocal and melodic hooks, danceable beats and textures that reflect their well-travelled global tastes and influences. As multi-instrumentalists, they both play most of the instruments on their recordings.
They each sing lead vocals on the songs that they contribute as writers, adding more diversity to the overall sound. Ultimately Panic is Perfect writes songs that, when stripped of all their elaborate production, are meaningful, memorable and undeniably unique and infectious.
