Customer Reviews

Aaltopiiri

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Despite some people being of the opinion that Pan Sonic contains a bunch of very creative, perhaps even groundbreaking musicians, I've sometimes rather thought the opposite when listening to some tracks on their early albums such as "Vakio" and "Kulma". My reservation about Pan Sonic's early work comes from the simple fact that sustained, ear-splitting noise and unfriendly test-tones without any concessions to melody (or at least some rhythms) are unfit for human consumption and cannot lead to a good listening experience. OK, so what about their latest album, the 70-minute "Aaltopiiri"? Great headache induction? According to Pan Sonic, the album was recorded at their studio in Barcelona (much closer to the sunny beach than to the Arctic Circle) without any special approach or plan; for the most part the music was even improvised and recorded straight on to tape. Given all these circumstances, it's extremely difficult for me to believe that such a meticulously crafted and varied release as "Aaltopiiri" would be the result of these jam sessions. Pan Sonic no longer betray the sibilant intrusiveness and lack of direction of their early efforts; they have kept their distinctive framework, but at the same time they have reached a new level. It's not just that "Aaltopiiri" has a much stronger cohesive glue than all previous Pan Sonic albums, it's also that even the shorter pieces are fully developed and the record itself sounds excellent due to the dynamic, minimalistic production. It does, however, not become immediately apparent that Pan Sonic have made a great leap forward. The album's first half contains some tracks which should be regarded as 'merely OK', mainly because they repeat some basic ideas of the duo's prior work. "Vaihtovirta", "Johdin", and "Liuos" (each having a running time of six minutes approx.) are three of these 'merely OK' tracks, offering hypnotic 4/4 rhythms and slight hints of synth melody coupled with Pan Sonic-typical background hums and processed feedback, but even in these fairly repetitive pieces one feels that the duo is quite concerned with creating certain atmospheres and moods this time. A highlight in the album's first half is the evocative "Aanipaa", whose intricately processed, disturbing samples are industrial in the true sense of the work: heavily crunching and textured. But it is "Ulottuvuus" where the real 'polar listening adventure' begins: Pan Sonic have not only discovered the world of echo, the have added an explicitly environmental feel and a completely new dimension to their music; it's very fascinating to listen how this metallic scratching and pounding comes and goes, how it echoes around in the distance and decays or becomes gradually replaced by other layers of sound. The 9 1/2-minute "Reuna-Alue" could be the best example of this, opening with something you might hear when you enter a huge, abandoned factory hall and soon giving away to positively entrancing polar soundscapes which are somewhat reminiscent of the stuff Biosphere has done. "Valli" is another one of these emotionally quite resonant pieces; it's perhaps even more creepy than "Reuna-Alue" due to the heavy pounding which could be taken from the soundtrack of a very good horror movie. The closing quintet of tracks heads into another direction and has a compelling dancefloor sharpness to it, along the lines of Aphex Twin's harsher output under the AFX and Caustic Window name. The 1 1/2-minute, tightly structured "Murskaus" is particularly impressive with its crunching frame drums and relentless drive, just as the 6-minute "Kierto". The latter introduces a fairly hard-hitting central beat which is joined by squalls of abrasive digital distortion and feedback. Admittedly, all the new developments in Pan Sonic's music will be noticeable for long-time followers only, but the brilliant ambient pieces on this album and the quite straightforward industrial-dance tracks ensure that there's something for everyone. I would also recommend "Aaltopiiri" as first purchase for the newly interested. Certainly this is Pan Sonic's best album so far.

You know what I love best about Pan Sonic? They are so minimal and so abstract that your mind has to fill in the gaps where the music doesn't exist. For creative people and imaginative people, this is a dream come true. You know what kind of person you are. The kind of person that listens to music and winds up making elaborate music videos or stories in your mind to accompany what you hear. Pan Sonic lets me do that more than any other artist out there today.

As far as this CD goes, it's every bit as good as their other releases. It seems to be somewhere between "A" and their more beat oriented material. It's not quite as atmospheric as "A", but rather it seems to have more sounds and melodies. It's certainly not as beat oriented as something like the Osasto EP, but rather the beats compliment the sounds as opposed to the sound filling the spaces between the beats.

This CD has so much character to it. For something that sounds so mechanical and raw, there truly is a human element to it. Maybe it's the structures, maybe it's the sounds. I don't know. But the CD is filled with personality.

When I listen to this CD (or any Pan Sonic CD) with headphones, I get more of an experiance, creative inspiration, enjoyment and involvement than I do from almost any other artist out there. I truly feel like an active participant when I LISTEN. Not hear, but actually LISTEN. If you do the same thing, you will not be dissapointed.

Amazing.

I would not advise anyone to do what I did, which was to plug this album into my ears and drift away to sleep on an airplane. Not only did I get weird dreams about being stranded on some automated supply base in the polar regions, but I was awakened near the end of the album by tremendous shrieking blasts of unattenuated feedback. Overall, I like the album a lot. It's not something I need to listen to daily, but I can definetely appreciate it as a work of music. I suppose there are people out there whose musical sensibilities are either so assaulted by conventional stuff or so advanced that this is like the soothing voice of the creator; but to me it's just nothing more or less than good. It reminds me of the pinging and thrumming of some as-yet-undeveloped intelligent tracking system, hijacked by missionaries who have just been to their first rave and who are trying to re-create the experience at a more "appropriate" tempo.

This was my second purchase and this I have to say this was an interesting listen. It was like going on some small journey. Excuse me if I sound like I'm being really pretentious but while listening to this album I kinda felt there was this mini-movie running in my head that would probably be interesting only to myself. Seeing snow-blizzard like conditions, strange new things that I had never seen before and it felt strange, voyeuristic and above all new. Amazing how modern technology/machinery can make you feel such emotions. One for the most adventurous of listeners.

Once again Ilpo Vaisanen and Mika Viano transports us to distant panoramic sounscapes that evokes the Finnish landscape - sublime minimal off - tones, shifting hues, subtle colours and vast plains disrupted by vertigenous mountainslopes. This is a world that is, despite its unfathomable beauty, literally uninhabitable and hostile to most living creatures.

In certain ways Aaltopiiri resembles the articulation of detail that one finds on 'A', but then it also introduces a wide scope of highly complex rythms and monochromatic textures reminding one of earlier work such as the intense grinding distortion on Kulma, or the slowly drifting tones on their individual releases such as Viano's YDIN.

A definite buy for Pan Sonic fans, and then also an excellent introduction to Pan Sonic for the uninitiated out there...

The more I listen to Pan sonic, the more it occurs to me that their sound is essentially nothing more than a cross between Japanese noise artists of the late '80s and Detroit techno musicians of the same period.

And the more I think about that match, the more interesting and unique that potential appears.

I'm still not quite sure what to make of this CD. Several friends reccomended it to me siting my interest w/ aphex twins, u-ziq and other IDM groups as a reason for trying out pan sonic.

I liked the cover art and the nearly unpronouncable song titles and I can see how this could be great chillout background music but I was greatly disappointed. Each track shimmers with washes of electronic bleeps and feedback and distortion but they all sound like blueprints to a better song, they all come across incomplete. After each track I listened to I was left disappointed, anticipating something more. A deeper level of sound or texture or even, dare I say it, soul.

Not to say that this isn't a good disc, I'm sure fans of pan sonic are thrilled with this release. I love minimalistic electronic music,however for me, I was left empty and unfufilled and after two listens of this disc I returned it for the new Orb instead.

Being a big fan of Autechre and Biosphere and the like I tried this cd out.

Some of the tracks start out promising and made me listen closer. But then it turns out they stay that way. If there is any feeling in these tracks (as is the case with Autechre) I have been unable to locate it.

Little pieces of music not related (as far as I can tell) in any way.