Into the “other”: Pan Sonic – Kesto (234.48:4)

by 5:4

i’m a sucker for series and cycles, from collections of compositions into a larger whole (such as Richard Barrett‘s Opening of the Mouth and Charles Tournemire‘s L’Orgue Mystique) to multiple-CD albums and box sets. i love them; perhaps it’s something to do with the sheer effort required to engage with something on so large a scale. Plus, of course, there’s the pleasure of allowing yourself to be taken on a journey in the hands of one who’s seeking to present something new and unfamiliar and exciting and strange. A fair bit of music’s like that, of course, and you could even argue a single song or small-scale composition is a “journey” of sorts; but expand that to a cycle of pieces that lasts an hour, or three, or more, and you’re into something epic, an odyssey.

My first this year is Pan Sonic‘s Kesto (234.48:4), the parentheses testifying to the duration of the album in minutes. i started a week ago, and finished yesterday evening; no journey of this scope can be tackled in a single stage, and i wanted to give each disc its own space to speak. The first two CDs represent the Pan Sonic that i recognise: raw, abrasive, oscillating glitch beats shot through with sheets of noise and the occasional glimpse of an ambient cloud – Autechre meets Merzbow while Eno looks on (or something like that). While similar in content, there’s a perceptible shift on CD2 away from the dirty IDM to something more pensive and abstract, the sounds still evolving but without such a strong sense of cycle and repetition. By the third disc, little remains of the synthetic drum sounds, presenting instead slabs of etherea that shift and confuse (one of the track titles translates as “Inexplicable”), appearing to pose questions rather than postulate solutions. Nonetheless, there’s a palpable air of assurance in the music; these are confident questions. All of which leads to the final, confounding, uplifting, disorienting, compelling disc, where a continual onslaught of sliding layers of sound – broad strokes with flashes of filigree – bathes, no floods the ears and engulfs the mind. i have no idea what thoughts, if any, passed during this overload. Not that the experience is a harsh one – far from it; the music came down on me like a ton of cushions; like zooming in on a Hafler Trio drone, mellifluous, sublime, entrancing, and never ever dull. But powerfully present; indeed, my ears were ringing for a long time after the single 61-minute track had expired.

Four CDs of sounds that sit somewhere in a no man’s land betwixt IDM, japanoise and something ineffable, jarring the eardrums, mangling the brain, shivering the soul. It’s tempting to suggest that this album had such a profound effect based on the strength of (especially) the last 2 CDs, and while it’s true to say i found those the most engaging (disc 4 is simply superb), i find it hard to separate any of them from the 4-disc journey which together they comprise. After all, the summit of a mountain only means something relative to the base and all that lies between. The nature of this journey is not something i have yet understood, but there’s a connotation of moving away from one “thing” – be it familiar or organised or layered, or whatever – toward something “other”, something subtle and beautiful and bright and dense and deep and everywhere. i have no idea where it’ll take me next time; and i can’t wait.


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