Customer Reviews

A.

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

 

 

Sometime after Panasonic's 1997 album "Kulma" was released, the electronics giant of the same name threatened legal action if Mika and Ilpo continued to release music as "Panasonic." By 1999, Pan Sonic dropped the "a" and went on to make some wonderful music, with the missing "a" showing up as the title of their next album.

"A" stands alone as a major album, but it was works well with its companion EP, "B". A sticker on the "B" jacket indicates that "A" contains atmospheres, while "B" contains beats. Although there are plenty of beats on "A", it's definitely more ambient than some of the previous Pan Sonic material.

Some see "A" as a new level of abstraction in Pan Sonic's work, but I don't know if I agree with that. While the techno elements that we heard in "Vakio" are gone, the music doesn't sound any more experimental than the previous material. Take the opening track of "Vakio" as an example: it's nothing more than a modulated sine wave - how much more basic and theoretical can you get?

One of the greatest aspects of Pan Sonic's work is the amazing sounds they get from their custom-made analog instruments. Those are firmly in the foreground on "A" sounding simultaneously alien and human. There are other great sound artists, such as Richard Devine", but Pan Sonic is different. Where Devine and others produce music marked by advanced digital signal processing, Pan Sonic has a more basic approach surrounded by analog warmth. Rather than finding new things to do with, say, granular synthesis (again, Devine), Pan Sonic uses the simplest of building blocks to create their sounds. You'll hear a lot of unadorned sine waves, basic amplitude modulation, and 808 bass drums.

While this isn't "minimalist" music, it is music built from minimal elements. It's repetitive, so those with short attention spans may not enjoy the slow developments on these tracks. Some tracks may even push what certain listeners are willing to call "music." "Joskus" is a 90-second drone that doesn't seem to have any sort of formal development. "Pala" begins with bleeps that sound more like they should be emanating from a piece of industrial machinery than from an album of music. However, when heard in the context of the album, they all make sense. If you heard some of the short tracks in isolation, the aesthetic value would be questionable. But, when heard in the midst of this album, they really work well as transitional material.

Some reviewers see these short little tracks as filler. While you wouldn't probably listen to them on their own, they are absolutely necessary when you look at the album as a whole. Yes, there are individual tracks, each with a title, but it's a continuous album that really demands to be heard in one sitting. To label the transitional tracks as "filler" is like saying that the areas of harmonic instability between thematic sections in a sonata are merely passage ways from A to B.

"A" will be challenging to some, but the effort is worth it. The music will grow on you over time and you'll continually notice new details. Unless you feel like you're pretty familiar with this sort of stripped-down sound experimentation, I might recommend starting with "Aaltopiiri" or "Kulma", just because there are enough familiar elements to easy you into the more abstract material.

If you've ever delighted in the sounds of amps being plugged in, scratchy power switches, and tests of the emergency broadcast system, look no further. On 'A', Finland's Pan Sonic meld all of the above into a soulless yet often fascinating soundscape. Rhythmic and pulsing on one track, droning and squeaking the next, this is avant noise at its finest. But those with no patience for aural experimentation (especially at high frequencies) should avoid.

This album delineates the realm of the machine. Its subject concerns the evolved intelligence of technology gone awry--of science merging with sound to culminate in a grandiloquent menage of industrial malaise. That 'A' and the remainder of Pan Sonic's catalouge is 'too abstract' or 'abjectly minimal' is of no importance to rabid experimentalists like myself.

Quite simply, 'A' is a landmark of brilliant innovation. It is an album concerned with unfettered mechanical ruminations coupled

with the sound of sound.

I first acquainted myself with this Finnish duo with their latest gem, 'Aaltopiiri;' an engaging, dynamic album that kept me spellbound at night along with the swirling snow from outside. I hunted down 'A' (quite a challenge) and mangaged to procure 'Vakio' from an outside retailer.

I am convinced that Pan Sonic is one of the finest duos working in the electronic field. Those of you who find their material 'too bland' either do not have the patience to meticuously process their work, or do not have the capacity to appreciate ingenuity.

A finds Pan Sonic (formerly Panasonic) heading out into their most abstract venture yet. While the rhythmic element that characterized past efforts is still present on about half the album, the rest is completely detached tones and drones. The opener is fantastic with its use of an open-line sound as a "drum." There is nothing on here that is quite as furious as the work on Kulma or Vakio, but it remains one of their strongest recordings to date.

Dear Pan Sonic fans, I just want to tell you that there's an album out called "Endless" by VVV. VVV is a collaboration between Pan Sonic and Suicide's singer Alan Vega. I thought it could be of interest to you because this item is not listed unter Pan Sonic. Check it out, it's worth a listen (4 stars).

For lovers of purely electronic music, and I mean electronic in the most banal sense of the word, Pan Sonic's first few albums were certainly among the most interesting of the '90s and proved to be a mind-opening, if sometimes also tedious listening adventure for advanced listeners. Whereas the monolithic "Osasto" EP was a clear leap forward from an intriguing start and 1998's "Endless" (under the VVV name) showed that Pan Sonic's music can blend menacingly well with angst-ridden, manic vocals, "A" is more or less a slightly refined variation of the sound we've found on "Vakio" and "Kulma". The overall audio quality has improved, with hiss subtracted and more dynamic beat constructions, but otherwise Pan Sonic do not always succeed in stressing instrumental technicality and hair-curling electronic noise over the importance of songwriting and melody. There are scatterings of Autechre, Main, and Pole splashed all over this collection of 17 soundscapes, but yet the energy, provocativeness and beauty felt from the aforementioned artists is largely absent here. It also seems as if some of the pieces here were dropped in as filler in order to make this disc last 64 minutes: Perhaps half of A's tracks are forgettable or do not leave a lasting impression because they have too few ideas for their length, repeat a simple pattern over and over again, or end up being somewhat pretentious, as if Pan Sonic had forgotten to listen to what they have created. The album's first half sounds a little more conventional and palatable in comparison, opening with the 6 1/2-minute "Maa", actually one of the best things Pan Sonic have done. The rhythm is composed of buzzing static which bounces between the stereo channels, underpinned by subtle bass punches and open-ended atmospherics in the background. "Lomittain" is another one of the beat-oriented tracks, with siren-like keyboard tones and a quite funky rhythm, while "Askel" and "Akemia" also manages to hold attention with unpredictable digital waves of static and distortion. "Havainto" starts with umcomfortable, screeching noise but soon gives away to wide-open landscapes of subtle background hums which are battling against a sustained test-tone. The definite highlight and the most gripping track on "A" is the 4 1/2-minute "Johto 2", a fascinating example of 'growth and decay'. The pronounced stereo effect lends an unsettling edge to the bouncy frequencies which continually build into sparkling walls of sound, then collapse and repeat these core motif; by the end of the track, the massive bass lines creep into the listener's bones and make all things which are placed near the speakers vibrate. The rest of "A" does never come close to this engaging and impressive track -- too many pieces sound like listening to a Geiger counter, random hiss, or pointless radio static. The ambient pieces also tend to be out of place since one has to crank up the volume only to hear some infinite rumblings, and the abrasive "Sarmays" totally breaks the mood with its irritating machine noise. The album-closing, 9 1/4-minute "Voima" also has little to offer, it winds up sounding like a pitched-down Autechre track but simply doesn't have the hypnotic or spooky quality it's striving for. In conclusion, the general alteration between fully developed pieces and filler makes "A" a hard album to love -- it's actually too noisy and disjointed for home listening while also being too bland for clubbers. Although listening to the full 64 minutes in one concentrated sitting is almost impossible, in smaller doses and with your finger on the 'skip' button of the remote control this is nevertheless an interesting example of machine language turned into uncompromising sonics. But when given the more accessible dance tunes on the accompanying 4-track EP "B" and the much more cohesive and less noisy new album "Aaltopiiri", there are really better places to go than "A", at least for your first taste of Pan Sonic.