Polo & Pan

Two DJs at Le Baron

Polo & Pan is Paul Armand-Delille and Alexandre Grynszpan. They met in 2012 at Le Baron, the Paris club where both were playing separately — Armand-Delille under the name Polocorp, Grynszpan as Peter Pan — and formed the duo in 2013. The stage name is a straight contraction of the two solo aliases, which tells most of what there is to know about how the partnership was assembled: two working club DJs who found their record boxes overlapped.

What emerged was house music built on material borrowed widely — tropical and world-music samples, spoken fragments, melodies lifted from outside the four-to-the-floor tradition. 'Canopée', released in 2016, was the first Polo & Pan record to chart, and it set the template the duo has been refining and occasionally fighting against ever since: a mid-tempo groove, a sung hook that sits somewhere between a nursery rhyme and a lounge record, and an arrangement that keeps adding small ornaments rather than building to a drop.

Caravelle, Cyclorama and a hymn

The debut album 'Caravelle' arrived in 2017 and was well received by the French press; it has since been certified platinum in France. 'Cyclorama' followed in 2021, reached number 10 on the French albums chart and was certified gold. The single that came off it, 'Ani Kuni', remains the duo's largest commercial moment — number 9 in France, number 6 in Belgium. Its melody is a traditional Arapaho hymn, and the decision to build a house single on it is characteristic of a group whose whole method is sourcing a melody from somewhere unlikely and rebuilding a dancefloor around it.

Those two albums also supplied the songs that structure every Polo & Pan performance. Setlist records across the duo's touring history put 'Canopée' at the top with 45 documented outings, 'Ani Kuni' just behind on 44, and 'Dorothy' on 37. Whatever else changes in a given set, some combination of those three is almost always in it, and 'Ani Kuni' is almost always positioned as a closer or near-closer.

'22:22' and the move towards playing rather than programming

The third album, '22:22', came out on 28 March 2025 through Ekler and Hamburger Records with Virgin, four years after 'Cyclorama'. It runs to twelve tracks and was assembled with noticeably more live instrumentation and analogue recording than the duo's earlier work, alongside a guest list that widened the palette: Joseph Mount of Metronomy, Beth Ditto, Kids Return, PawPaw Rod and Arthur Teboul. Ditto sings on 'Petite Etoile', a slower, heavier groove that reviewers tended to single out; Mount features on 'Disco Nap'.

Critical response was warm but not uniform. EDM Identity's review, published the day of release, read the record as an exercise in balance, with the stylistic collisions treated as the point rather than a problem. This Song Is Sick took the simpler line that the album was house music done well. On Album of the Year, user reaction clustered lower, in the high sixties, with a recurring complaint that '22:22' is more cohesive and more grown-up than what came before and also flatter — fewer of the single-bar surprises that made 'Caravelle' travel.

The promotional campaign leaned hard on visuals. The video for 'A Different Side of Us', featuring PawPaw Rod, was directed by Clovis Lamour and built from restored archival film and kaleidoscopic choreography, with the director citing the heavily stylised Hollywood musicals of the 1930s and 1940s as the reference point.

Two years of touring the record

The live campaign behind '22:22' began in Europe in spring 2025 and moved to a festival slot at Coachella on 13 April 2025, on the Outdoor Theatre stage. That set ran to sixteen songs, opened with 'The Piano & The Violin', closed with 'Ani Kuni', and brought on Victoria Lafaurie for two songs and PawPaw Rod for one — a fuller, guest-assisted version of the show that the duo has not been able to replicate in shorter slots since.

The headline run followed. The Americas Tour 2025 was announced in May and took in 21 dates across the United States, Canada, Colombia, Chile, Argentina and Brazil, opening on 12 September 2025 and finishing in São Paulo on 12 November. That tour played rooms the duo could fill on their own name: theatres and ballrooms rather than sheds.

September 2026: opening the amphitheatres

The current position is a different one. On 12 March 2026 Empire of the Sun announced the Ask That God: Afterlife North American tour — 31 dates running from Red Rocks Amphitheatre on 11 August 2026 to PH Live at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas on 9 October — with Polo & Pan and Midnight Generation supporting on every headline date. Artist presale opened on 17 March, general sale on 20 March.

That has put the duo in front of considerably larger crowds than their own draw would command, at the cost of set length. The August and September legs took in Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls on 21 August, the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago on 22 August, Québec's Agora du Port on 27 August, PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel on 2 September, then Charlotte on the 9th, Richmond on the 10th, Birmingham on the 12th, Alpharetta on the 13th, Miami on the 16th, Tampa on the 17th, Dallas on the 20th and the Moody Center in Austin on 21 September.

Three dates remain on the run: Gallagher Square at Petco Park in San Diego on 7 October, Los Angeles on 8 October and the Las Vegas finale on 9 October. The duo has then scheduled one headline show of their own immediately afterwards, at The Midway in San Francisco on 10 October 2026 — the only date on the North American calendar where they control the full running time. Songkick's count puts them at 26 shows so far in 2026; Paris, with roughly 30 documented performances, is still by some distance their most-played city.