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< Pan sonic: A >
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| Supplier : Brotherhood Of Satan Release Date : 03/07/2004 |
| Ripper : Brotherhood Of Satan Record Label : Blast First |
| Genre : Electronic Quality : VBR/APS/44,1kHz |
| Tracks : 17 Tracks Channels : Joint Stereo |
| Year : 1999 Size : 82,5 MB |
| Language : English Rating : 77% of 100% |
_| Grabber : EAC v0.95 Prebeta 4 Encoder : LAME v3.90.3 |_
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< Release Description >
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The follow-up to Kulma and Pan Sonic's third full-length CD, the
obliquely titled A was structured in exactly the same way as its
predecessors, the only difference being it pushed things further down
the spiral of abstraction. Early on, the duo obliges with a few
danceable cuts -- i.e., they are beat-based and thus suitable for the
dancefloor, but they will challenge any rave-goer. Quickly things take
a turn for the glitch, the click, and the buzz, as rhythm becomes an
evasive notion, mainly the result of a repeated loop. But the shift
from one pole to the other is not as smooth and eloquent as on the
previous album. If anything, A is even more stripped down, isolating
the listener in a padded room, in which faulty electrical wiring
causes hums and buzzes to bounce around. But this level of abstraction
remains more listener friendly than Ilpo Vaisanen's solo CD, Asuma, or
Mika Vainio's collaboration with Carsten Nicolai. Compared to those
projects, this CD shimmers with variety, clever arrangements, and
general public appeal (well, kind of). Pan Sonic had a knack for
teaching its audience how to listen, taking them by the hand to make
sure they follow the duo's changing esthetic. Therefore, A is their
most accomplished work, but not the best place to start -- unless you
are already well versed in the music produced by record labels such as
Mego and Raster-Noton.
The most famous act to originate from Sahko Recordings, Panasonic (now
called Pan sonic), first came into being in the summer of 1993 through
the meeting of two creative minds, Mika Vainio (born 1963) and Ilpo
Vaisanen (born 1963 in Kuopio, Finland). Vainio had worked as a DJ in
the 80's and created his own music with Pertti Gronholm, as Corporate
09. Vaisanen was originally from Kuopio, Finland and ended up in Turku
because of his studies, where he joined the members of the Hyperdelic
Housers group organising rave parties; Vainio and Tommi Gronlund -
- who was to found the Sahko label -- among them. Ilpo Vaisanen had
been responsible for the official Down By The Laituri 1990 festival
poster, and was during that time also a member of Ultra 3, an artistic
group of wide-ranging interests which, after Mika Vainio joined, was
renamed to Sin ╪. (Vaisanen was also involved with Guerilla Jazz Rules
group.)
Mika says: "In the early eighties, we were very interested in
industrial music like Throbbing Gristle, Einstⁿrzende Neubauten and
Suicide. Eventually our musical tastes turned toward reggae, hip hop
and experimental music. When acid house began, that obviously heavily
influenced us, but we haven't been following that scene either for
several years now."
The one-time third member of Panasonic, Sami Salo, finally joined in
1994 after having come to contact with Vainio and Vaisanen through
Sahko (for which Salo had recorded a 12" as Hertsi), and their first
EP was also released that year. Paul Smith, the main man of Mute's
sublabel Blast First, saw Panasonic's gig in England at a club called
Vox in autumn 1994, and eventually signed the act to his label. Pan
sonic's performance at New York's Disobey club of Knitting Factory in
early 1995 also increased duo's popularity Stateside.
So far there has been three Pan sonic albums from Blast First, Vakio
in September 1995, Kulma in January 1997 and A in February 1999; with
also one EP, Osasto out in July 1996. Furthermore, they broadcast a
live session with John Peel for BBC in autumn 1995.
Panasonic performed at the end of 1995 in a car park in London's East
End with a notorious Audio Weapons Armoured Car System -- or 'Advanced
Acoustic Armaments' sound system rigged up on an armoured car -
- featuring a 5K turbo sound PA which was built and developed by Jimmy
Cauty of The KLF fame. According the rumours the device was similar to
those the police's riot forces were using, causing low frequency
sounds to accelerate the rioters' bowel movements, thus incapacitating
them by making them mess their pants... (As Jimmy Cauty is known as
the master of disinformation, these rumours should be taken with the
proverbial grain of salt.) At a recent Ars Electronica festival of
Linz, Austria, Pan sonic played in a train which circulated around an
industrial area.
Other memorable Pan sonic prank was, of course, the group's original
name nicked from the famous electronics manufacturer, which must have
caused many frustrations to their record label. As Toshiba, the
Panasonic Electronics' biggest competitor in Japan had plans to
licence the group's music from Blast First, the change of name seemed
to become more probable all the time. The latest news tell that after
having been contacted by the lawyers of Panasonic USA, who threatened
the act and their record label with legal actions, from spring 1998
onwards the duo is officially to be called Pan Sonic. Thus were also
crushed Ilpo's hopes that the band would have been sponsored by their
electronics giant namesake...
Pan sonic cite as their influences, first of all, Alan Vega's and
Martin Rev's legendary proto-techno duo Suicide (with which they were
gigging in March 1998; not to mention the recorded collaboration with
Alan Vega), industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle and Einstⁿrzende
Neubauten, the French "musique concrΦte" composer Pierre Henry and the
eccentric cult rockabilly musician Hasil Adkins -- Mika Vainio has
sometimes jokingly called Pan sonic's music "horsemeat rockabilly".
Their sound is, according to Mika, increasingly moving away from the
regular 4-4 techno, and is now, for example, inspired by old Jamaican
dub reggae and ska. And of course rockabilly, which Mika likes with a
late-70's Eno-ish twist. Unsurprisingly, Japanese noise artists, such
as Pain Jerk, have lately inspired Pan sonic. Mika considers their
Japanese gigs with Yamatsuka Eye of The Boredoms some of the most
important during their career; especially the Tokyo night was received
very well among the press and the audience. Furthermore, Mika and Ilpo
are into Hurriganes [sic], the "legendary" Finnish power trio of
rock'n'roll Neandernthals back in the 70's (the band's drummer-singer
Remu couldn't speak English, so the lyrics were written phonetically
for him, and so on).
Mika isn't really into today's "electronica" and its computer-driven
sound, though Pan sonic have increasingly delved into modern sampler
technology as of late. The group also has an "extra member" called
Jari Lehtinen who's responsible for building Pan sonic's instruments
with which their extraordinary humming sounds have been created. Mika
describes their custom equipment: "We have a synthesizer which is one
big box that has twelve oscillators on it; you can connect them to
each other and modulate them together. We also have this small
synthesizer which is built to an old typewriter -- we call it
'Typewriter'. We have several drum modules to make rhythmic sounds
which we are using with an 808. Jari Lehtinen is also building us this
large synthesizer that will have eight oscillators and a cross
connection board, like the early 70s, late 60s synthesizers."
Alongside Typewriter, also known as "Complex Sound Generator" there is
also a self-built, approximately six metre-long infrasonic tube,
called "John Holmes".
Pan sonic now use also samplers and a computer based sequencer,
MPC2000. So they can leave the "fishing box" back home since it
doesn't travel well. Mika says he doesn't really know anything about
computers or MIDI-based music nor does he want to. He is very much
into sounds felt by the body and the effect of frequencies on the
brain.
As to Pan sonic's live presentation, they opt to stay true to their
harsh, minimalist nature. On stage the band is illuminated by blue
light and stand behind their equipment, intently tweaking knobs and
levels. Another creation from their engineer friend provides the one
changing visual. "We have this oscilloscope which is connected to a
video projector. It's just a simple white line on a black background
behind us which reacts to our frequencies and the sounds that we are
making. That's the only visual thing but I think it works really
well."
Pan sonic thinks they usually have their best gigs in Germany, because
of the electronic music tradition there from the 1950's onwards. They
also mention France for the same reasons. Americans in their turn,
Vaisanen laughs a bit ironically, consider everything coming from
Europe being automatically of very high quality, since this continent
is regarded there as a kind of "cradle of culture".
News: 1996/97
As far as the latest news of Pan sonic go, Sami Salo left the group in
1996 for his service in the Finnish Army (obligatory to all young men
in Finland) and to concentrate on his career as a photographer, and
Panasonic continued as a duo of Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen.
Pan sonic's performance with David Crawford and Hayley Newman at Rude
Mechanic event took place at South London art space Beaconsfield
during November 1996. The musicians isolated themselves in the
concrete bunker of Beaconsfield, condemning themselves to fill every
hour of every day between 10am and 6pm with the ever-present seisms of
Pan sonic, that would be augmented with extra sound input from a
series of invited guests, like Jimi Tenor, Bruce Gilbert or Scanner.
This kind of experimentation was nothing new to Mika Vainio and Ilpo
Vaisanen, though: as part of their late-80's performances in the Ultra
3 group they had once spent 10 hours in a locked room, exposed to the
constant low-frequency hum of 125 decibels... (In early 1999 a limited
2-CD was released of the highlights of Rude Mechanic.)
Furthermore, Pan sonic has created music for some avantgarde fashion
shows and participated in with some installation projects in Japan,
France and North America.
In early 1997 Mika Vainio moved to live in London and Panasonic toured
Europe as the warm-up act of the farewell tour of The Swans. In Paris,
France, Mika Vainio's sound installation was also scheduled to June 18
to July 13, 1997 at MusΘe d'art Moderne de la Ville de Paris as the
20th part of their Migrateurs project. (Also, some information on the
joint projects of Carsten Nicolai and Mika Vainio here.)
1998
Panasonic released a 12-inch with their long-time hero Alan Vega, the
vocalist of legendary Suicide, called "Medal", at the end of January
of 1998. A full-length album of Pan Sonic's sessions with Vega,
Endless, was out early July on Blast First, Vega being very happy with
the end result. Pan sonic had been working for Japanese fashion
houses, providing soundtrack for their shows in Paris, with Comme des
Carτons, and Tokyo.
Early February saw the exhibition of Scandinavian modern art at the
Museum of Modern Art in Paris, for which Mika Vainio built a sound
installation based around Bjork's videos and the works of British
multimedia artist Jeremy Deller (known also for his Acid Brass album
and ***K The Millennium project of former KLF members). Also some co
-operation with the German FM Einheit (ex-Einstⁿrzende Neubauten) is
expected during this year.
Mika Vainio provided another sound installation for the art gallery
Titanik's ten year celebration in Turku, after which Pan sonic toured
the US West Coast, starting in San Francisco at the end of May, and
continuing during early summer. Pan sonic also created a test tone
specially for experimental London radio station Resonance 107.3 FM,
which was broadcast on 10 June, 1998.
Following in the footsteps of his Sahko label mates Tommi Gronlund and
Jimi Tenor, Mika had now moved to live in Barcelona, Spain, where, it
could be said, they had a small Finnish techno colony (afterwards,
Tommi moved back to Helsinki and Jimi to London). Also Ilpo Vaisanen
regarded Barcelona, Spain, as his "homebase", but promised he wouldn't
lose his Turku home for its being an ideal place for relaxation.
1999
As far as the members' solo projects go, Ilpo Vaisanen will
participate in with the art gallery Titanik's group exhibition later
this year (Vaisanen was a member of the managing board of the art
gallery up to the mid-90's), and should soon also release music of his
Jarru ("Brake") project on Turku's Mind Records label. On the 29th of
January, Ilpo Vaisanen DJ'd at Turku's Funky Kitchen club as DJ Leggo
Fat, thus having a rare appearance in his home country, where Pan
sonic was not going to be seen before September 1999, at least. Both
Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen should release one "episode" on Raster
Music's and Noton's "20' To 2000" project, where a CD of 20 minutes is
released every month from such electronic artists as Thomas Brinkmann
and Scanner.
The recordings for the new Pan sonic album started on February 1998,
and the end result called A was released on February 22, 1999; the EP,
B, followed on March 29, 1999. Mika and Ilpo said about the name of
the album: "We had to drop the letter 'a' from our name, so that's
where the album title came from. It all happened about a year ago
[1998], Panasonic sent a legal letter to Blast First. But the letter
was from Panasonic in the USA, we never heard anything from Europe or
Japan. It did take a lot longer than we thought it would, we were
expecting it would happen really quickly." In February 1999 Pan sonic
also had a show in London with the Japanese noise artist Masonna.
For Pan sonic's 1999 schedule, a four-week European tour was planned
from March onwards in France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Belgium.
The last gigs of the tour were cancelled, though, since Mika suffered
from a very bad case of tour exhaustion. However, May's North American
dates with postrock band Trans Am were held as scheduled. At
Barcelona's Sonar festival Pan sonic, as the "mascots" of festival,
threw a Jamaica-themed beach party as Puumiehet ("Wood Men").
September 1999 saw them coming back to Finland, playing in Turku's
Dynamo, Tampere's Club Telex and Helsinki's Saunabar.
Pan sonic were planning a gig for the New Year's Eve 1999/2000 to New
Zealand, where they should have played by a volcano, but nothing
seemed to come out of this in the end. However, they still also
dreamed about making a live album on the Easter Islands, and they said
their record label seemed to be getting excited about this courageous
idea, too...
2000
Early 2000, Pan sonic were actively working on the new album in
Barcelona. As Ilpo had now also moved from Finland to Barcelona,
things were moving along a bit quicker these days.
The second in their collaboration series (No 1 was V.V.V., Pan sonic
with Alan Vega of Suicide) was completed early 2000 - V.V.E. (with
F.M. Einheit, ex of Einstⁿrzende Neubauten), being called Muftis
Guesthaus and having a sleeve painting by Caspar Brotzmann. Expected
out for late 2001. There were supposed to be V.V.E. shows in London &
Munich, maybe more.
Pan sonic supported Suicide for two nights at Knitting Factory, New
York, on January 20 and 21, 2000. They also recorded a session for
WMFU during this visit too. The dates with Suicide seemed to go well
and Rolling Stone magazine interviewed them for inclusion in a
review/feature-ette of the nights. Also, plans were laid for V.V.V. to
record another project in the not too distant future.
Mika released a new solo album for TOUCH, called Kajo ("Glow), in
April. Ilpo was supposed to release his first solo album proper via
Mego, Austria, some time during 2000. Ilpo's album echoed his original
inspiration, old reggae music.
Pan sonic were also contributing to an installation in a group show
curated by David Toop, called Sonic Boom, at Hayward Gallery, on the
South Bank, London, 27th April - 18th June 2000. Their work was called
"2 x 50 Hz Thru Leslie Speaker". Pan sonic sound art has also been
heard at the Walker Art Center of Minneapolis, Chicago's Museum of
Modern Art and Foundation Cartier of Paris. On May Pan sonic had a
concert at the Queen Elisabeth Hall of South Bank Centre, the home of
London Sinfonietta, together with FM Einheit and Caspar Brotzmann. The
ensuing infernal noise made at least the fourth of audience flee in
horror.
The good news was that Pan sonic completed recording the music for the
new Nissan Almeria car, world-wide ad campaign; directed by Brian
Griffin, who has also created the two Pan sonic videos to date (Urania
& Endless) at Mute studios, London. The track is based on the first
track from "A" with extra sounds, but with no sound effects or voice
over. The bad news was that Nissan ended up using a track by - of all
people - Moby.
Pan sonic performed as an opener for the Wire at Irving Plaza, NYC on
May 15, 2000. Pan sonic also played in Buenos Aires (an offal & meat
eating capitol) on May 18th & DJed with Jeff Mills on May 19th.
V.V.E., Pan sonic's collaboration project with FM Einheit, performed
live at Barcelona's Sonar festival on 16 June. FM Einheit's additional
stage show with a piece of scrap metal with microphones and rocks made
blood run from the hands and forehead of the artist as the rocks
hurled around uncontrollably. A Pan sonic documentary of 50 minutes,
Kuvaputki ("Cathode ray tube"), directed by Ed Quist, also had its
premiere at Sonar. Critics compared the black and white film to early
rock'n'roll documentaries. August 2000 saw Pan sonic gigging in their
former hometown Turku in Finland, at Koneisto festival where the
astonished journalists of The Wire witnessed the audience clapping
their hands to Pan sonic's beats and Mika smiling(!); with more
Finnish gigs coming in November, at Helsinki's Avanto festival and
Tampere's Club Telex (Mika Vainio together with Mego's Fennesz).
2001-2002
There was a new Pan sonic album out on Blast First! early 2001, called
Aaltopiiri ("Wave circle"). They were still looking for exotic and
different places to perform at, instead of the usual rock clubs,
galleries or festivals, such as the Easter Islands or Ilpo's
favourite, Tijuana. Late 2001 saw Pan sonic's collaboration album with
British composer Barry Adamson (known for his film soundtrack) on
Iceland's Kitchen Motors label.
In 2002 Pan sonic performed among all with Chicks on Speed in London
and Peaches at Barcelona's Sonar. They also played at Helsinki's
Avanto festival, November 2002, on instruments built by Finnish
electronic whiz Erkki Kurenniemi in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The new collaborative project of German Dirk Dresselhaus (commonly
known as Schneider TM) and Ilpo was called Angel. They improvised
live, mixing together old industrial, minimal and noisy wall of sound,
releasing a 12" on French Bip-Bop label in late 2002, and both Ilpo's
and Angel's tracks appeared on Bip-Bop Generation Vol. 6 compilation.
Ilpo's new solo album Joulu ("Christmas") to appear on Wavetrap (UK)
was announced. Pan Sonic also completed a new collaboration with
Suicide's Alan Vega.
2003
Pan sonic played in Moscow, Russia. Pan sonic's 2002 appearance with
Erkki Kurenniemi appeared on Mika Taanila's DVD The Dawn of DIMI. It
also was announced that Pan sonic was going to perform at the
industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle's reunion event in May 2004.
http://www.phinnweb.com/panasonic/
Tracks:
01. Maa (6:27)
02. Pala (0:29)
03. Lomittain (3:50)
04. Joskus (1:32)
05. Askel (5:15)
06. Ahdin (2:15)
07. A-Kemia (4:55)
08. Johto 1 (4:23)
09. Havainto (3:31)
10. Etaisyys (2:26)
11. Aleneva (4:03)
12. Aktiivi (1:32)
13. Rajatila (5:18)
14. Johto 2 (4:38)
15. Telakoe (2:59)
16. Sarmays (1:14)
17. Voima (9:13)
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