A

text

The name has changed slightly, and so has the sound. Still, this could only be Pan(a)sonic. Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen have made a point of remaining the same, yet different, for each new record. If they had followed the curve predicted by Vakio (bare, raw sound in a state of permanent flux), the Osasto EP (scathingly harsh electronics) and Kulma (icy and predominantly caustic, with a fleetingly funky shape), A would have been in the vicinity of Ice, Techno Animal and mid-period Scorn. Instead, a vague, gravity-defying dub sensibility places A in a class without comparison. Pan Sonic play their new dub card especially well in "Maa" and "Voima," where radioactive rhythmic pellets ricochet intriguingly within the compressed space of a vacuum chamber. Dub also figures in the Pole-like brushed-snare skip-groove of "Ahdin" and in the fantastic "A-kemia," evolving - Dr. Rockit style - from a circular accretion of echoed footsteps and crackles. The Finnish pioneers have had plenty of company in the pulse/static playpen since Vakio first turned electronic music on its ear. They've been joined by musicians new and old, hailing from every point of the globe - Iceland (Stilluppsteypa), Austria (Pomassl), Spain (Esplendor Geometrico), France (Freq 63, Celluloid Mata), Japan (Ryoji Ikeda, *0), Germany (Noto), the Netherlands (Goem), the Soviet Union (f.r.u.i.t.s.), the U.K. (The Sidewinder, Bruce Gilbert) and the United States (Atalatl). Each has brought his own tricks to the table and helped to expand a specialized realm of music, one otherwise all but forgotten since Gottfried Michael König's seminal experiments in 1950's Germany, into a fertile pool of nanotechnological and microtonal possibilities. There's little doubt that Vainio and Vaisanen have taken note of other artists' output, but they still sound remarkably self-possessed - rather miraculous, given how conducive the musical climate is to the rampant cross-contamination of ideas. You'll find all of the favored Vainio/Vaisanen devices; frigid, chattering pulses, artfully wrenched sinewaves ("Pala," "Johto 2," "Aleneva"), techno rhythms stripped to their metallic essence ("Lomittain," "Askel," "Telakoe"), streamings of cold and molten noise and varicolored static obsessively mastered, tamed and directed ("Aktiivi," "Havainto," "Rajatila" and "Sarmays," the last two recalling the whirling machine-djinns of John Duncan, Daniel Menche and alter-statesman Merzbow). But with that extra whiff of dub, Pan Sonic lighten up the slaughterhouse ambiance of Kulma while retaining the mechanical precision and utter alienness of their music. Indicative of neither a tamed, kinder/gentler Pan Sonic nor a compromise of the Finn's ongoing experiment, A is more of a reshuffling of a distinctive deck with the welcome inclusion of a Joker or two.