VARIOUS 'PING VOLUME ONE' 2LP

Ping Volume One is a document of shared instinct. A collection of tracks connected by feel rather than formula, shaped by years of dialogue between a community of artists and listeners who were drawn to the same sounds & ideas before they had a name.

In 2013, Different Circles launched with Weightless Volume One, a compilation that helped define a new minimalist aesthetic in electronic music. Twelve years later and after a six-year pause, the label returns with its tenth release: Ping Volume One.

Like weightless, ping isn’t a genre. It's an approach to anchoring and propelling sound without relying on the steady pulse of a kick drum. Instead, a single percussive hit — the ping — holds the centre.

Dry and high in the mix, or echoing distantly through space, it becomes a temporal anchor. Around it, the rest of the track can undulate, bend, float or collapse. The term first appeared on Mumdance’s radio show, where playing “the pingy ones” from the Different Circles back catalogue became a running joke.

In the Discord community, it evolved into a shared language, with memes, lore, and a mascot known as the Ping Devil. In 2023, Mumdance aired The “Ping Report” a radio show that gathered everything into a coherent moodboard. It included original tracks made by Discord members for the show and set the foundations.

From there, more producers began making ping intentionally, and over time, Ping Volume One took shape. As the idea came into focus, Logos and Mumdance noticed that much of the Different Circles back catalogue, if not explicitly weightless, could now be understood through the lens of ping. It was a sound they had been drawn to long before they had a language to describe it. 

Cat no. DIFF010V
Expected: 27th August 2025