ilpo vaisanen - asuma - or one free essay about pan sonic sound

[Boban Ristevski <sir_blacktooth@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ilpo Vaisanen
Asuma
(Mego)
((sorry about the lenght))

It's a little bit strange that Pan Sonic are pretty
much famous around the world but the music they make
is so distant from all kinds of commercial music.
Besides that, Mika and Ilpo still enjoy the respect of
many differen kinds of people no matter where those
people live, what they do or how old are they. The
reason for that is simply Pan Sonic music and sound.
Pan Sonic music is actually sound. As a band and as
musicians they are mostly concentrated on sound. There
is no much diversity in the sounds they use, that are
basically clicks and cuts that are rhythmically
arranged. But the most important thing in Pan Sonic
work is that they believe that sound within itself has
some kind of information. That's important because Pan
Sonic, exploring that inner sound contents manage to
create different and various soundscapes that
automatically reach all people in the world that want
to hear those informations. And I think those
informations can be also interpreted as the libido of
the music equipment. Once I read that Merzbow (the
most famous noise artist in the world) said this: "My
first motivation for creating sound was anti-use of
electric equipment - broken tape recorder, broken
guitar, amp etc. I thought I could get a secret voice
from equipment itself when I lost control. That sound
is unconsciousness, libido of equipment." I think what
Merzbow is saying about his views on music creation
can be also said about Pan Sonic sound. Mika Vainio
and Ilpo Vaisanen also like to use specific equipment,
and their music is in a way anti-use of the sound
itself, that's music created of marginal sounds that
in some other musics would be interpreted as a
mistake. Try to imagine listening to one long and very
quiet ambient song. If you suddenly hear one of those
click-sounds during that song and if that sound never
repeats again until the end of the song, you will
think that was nothing more than a mistake in the
sound. All those mistakes in Pan Sonic context have
extremely different meanings.
In their about 10 years existance as a band Pan Sonic
have released wonderful records (their last album
Aaltopiiri is simply a masterpiece, for me probably
one of the best 3 albums in the past 10 years), then
they've made music for experimental movies, played
live on places where other bands don't play live (on
trains, parking lots?), collaborated with many
different musicians and made remixes for Einsturzende
Neubauten and Merzbow among others. Perfect musical
career.
And besides all that, Mika and Ilpo also release solo
albums, although their collaborative work as Pan Sonic
remains the main occupation and something they are
most known for. This is one of those solo albums, Ilpo
Vaisanen's album Asuma released on austrian (I suppose
well known) experimental label Mego. This is not an
album that can be interpreted song by song, at last I
don't like to divide all songs and talk about them
separately. But the sound on Asuma is very similar to
Pan Sonic's Aaltopiiri and everything I said about Pan
Sonic can be also said about Asuma, one of the best
Mego releases I've heard. There is nothing noticeable
different here (which is good in this case). The
approach to the sound is the same, maybe this are some
tracks that didn't find their place on Aaltopiiri? But
I really don't care that much. I'm just fascinated
with this Pan Sonic/Ilpo Vaisanen (whatever) sound.
This sound is much bigger and powerful than those who
made it. The sound practically transcends the authors
and their names signed on the albums. It has separate,
own life and continues to live beyond the people that
created it. If you already know what i'm talking about
and if you know all this things about Pan Sonic, if
you've heard Aaltopiiri and you liked it, then you
know everything about Asuma too, because that's like
the second part of Aaltopiiri. Greetings to Mika and
Ilpo, one of the best musicians in the world, those
kind of musicians that when you think about them, they
will make you think that all music in the world
wouldn't make any sense if there weren't Pan Sonic.

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