The computer, with its non-destructive editing and infinite power of magnification, invites those who use it as a creative tool to focus on the micro. In the digital realm, people have an almost unlimited control of detail, and so the microscopic naturally become more important. In electronic music, where the standards of commercial software gently tug sound in the direction of familiar poles, the details are often the only way to separate yourself from the bedroom laptop guy down the street. For one to find their own sound, they have to match up a half-dozen sonic parameters that they hope will differ at least slightly from what others have done before.
Finland's Pan Sonic is on another trip. If your average click + cut technician makes music by carefully placing drops of sound in the clear pool of stereophonic space, Pan Sonic prefer to crank up the fire hose. Descriptions of their live show usually contain the word "brutal" and, as with inspiration Throbbing Gristle, they're rumored to contain the kind of sub-audible tones the Department of Defense developed for use on the battlefield. Generally eschewing computers in favor of analog tone generators run through a series of filters and pedals, Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen do their best to steer raw electrical current toward something approaching music. But hey, no promises.
It's been three years since Pan Sonic's last full-length, a time of touring and side projects, and Kesto finds them throwing their hat back into the ring with panache. Kesto is a 4xCD quadruple album set packed in individual slipcases housed in a box that matches the Touch and Rune Gramophone labels in visual presentation. In a time when almost everyone considers CDs too long, lumping four nearly full discs together and calling it your new album is self-aggrandizement bordering on clinical mania. Kesto works, though, because Pan Sonic, through intelligent sequencing and a burst of inspiration, are essentially offering four separate, complete, and internally consistent albums. Each disc has its own mood and offers a rounded take on a different mix of genres.
CD1 is by far the most aggressive, but also conforms most closely to pop structure. Three short tracks called "Mayhem" (all tracks are titled in Finnish with rough English counterparts, and I will cite the English versions here) are the viscera that hold the taut flesh of CD1 together. "Mayhem I" is, in my mind, the finest album opener in recent memory, a positively inspired and life-affirming blast of horribly overdriven chords that somehow congeal into an anthem. All I can think of when I hear "Mayhem I" is Merzbow covering Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Pt. 2". It's a risky Jock Jam that verges on criminal negligence, seemingly designed to further incite a stadium packed with meth-heads. "Mayhem II" has a fast and jerky new wave rhythm but is no less generous with its colossal riff, and Pan Sonic have a lot of fun here with layering. When you think the disc can't get any more abrasive, a sudden shriek of white noise arrives to push "Mayhem II" even further into the red. The rest of CD1 ranges from a gritty tracks that solder industrial shoegaze to breakdancing rhythms ("Fugalforce") to breath-catching drone interludes.
Kesto's CD2 keeps the short tracks and hooks of CD1 but strips the sound and focuses more on rhythm. If CD1 is inspired by the 1970s-- specifically Suicide's take on machine rock (Pan Sonic dedicates CD1's "Diminisher" to the group), CD2 finds them exploring 80s electro, pitching the normally chilly atmospheric temperature of the genre toward absolute zero. The classic electro syncopation is the driving force, but Pan Sonic fill the space in and around the drum hits with sound effects, banging chords, laser beams, Dre'd-out Minimoogs, and another dollop of noise. Though electro is the running theme of CD2, the actual mood is quite varied, going from the dispassionate downtempo of "Arctic", the perfect soundtrack to a slow 3 a.m. cruise into the Canyon down Mulholland Drive, to the ruff'n'tuff housequake tubthump of "Current-Transformer". CD2 winds around but sounds great straight through.
CD3 begins with a low hum that leads to the sound of a toilet flushing, and while the effect is not really indicative of the sound to follow, the third disc is indeed the weakest of the lot. Here is Pan Sonic at their most abstract and soundscape-oriented, offering a handful of long tracks that sound like field recordings from a secret concrete chamber located beneath a decaying prison-- lots of banging metal echoing sharply off of concrete, with disconcertingly large gaps of silence. "Corridor" and "Appearenceform" incorporate unpredictable eruptions of noise interspersed with imperceptible tones. "Air" begins with the sound of a hanging garden of live jumper cables sparking wildly on a windy day, and then morphs into what sounds like a series of overlapping gongs. While it is often effectively spooky, CD3 too often feels like merely passable dark ambient.
Better is "Radiation", the hour-long track that makes up the final disc of Kesto. The drone rules the day here, and Pan Sonic builds the kind of vaguely Eastern future/primitive texture first explored by early 70s electronic music like Tangerine Dream. And believe me, they have plenty of time to explore every last nuance of their basic set of sounds. Does it need to be an hour, you ask? Well, no, but "Radiation" seems the kind of track designed to provide a slightly tense atmosphere and can be variously tuned in or out over time.
For an album that begins with such a shocking and brief blast of rock power to end with an endless exercise in ambience provides a pleasing ying/yang effect. No four-disc album is lacking dull patches, and Kesto is certainly not an exception, but there's a lot of really excellent music here, and you have to give Pan Sonic credit for audacity. This is truly the width and breadth of what they are capable of-- if they've ever thought it, it's here-- and it's actually difficult to imagine them ever making another record. Where else could they go?
