“An immense tribute to the outfit Ilpo Väisänen played in alongside his friend and former creative partner Mika Vainio.”
If you are a long time fan of Pan Sonic, this album is a bit of a review of sorts. A lot of material was assembled from (I understand) recent studio recordings where Mika Vainio (R.I.P.) was involved and some older, archived material that it was felt needed to be released.
The end result is a somewhat shorter version of what you’d hear across the wide body of Pan Sonic works—everything from cold, minimal ambient, to sonic tear-outs and everything in between. Abbreviated in the sense that, if you encountered a Pan Sonic album, you’d probably be in for a much longer overall album with much longer individual tracks. However, I really feel that ÄÄNET works. If you enjoyed Gravitoni (Blast First Petite, 2010)—which was sort of in a similar, wide-ranging set of styles—compared to the sometimes very minimal side projects like 0 where an entire album/project might focus on one particular style.
Personally, I think a lot of the recordings on ÄÄNET have a sort of rough, maybe not as refined, and razor sharp sound as most of their other studio works, however, I assume that’s due to the nature of the source materials. Also, they are more like sonic spaces than structured songs—not unusual in the Pan Sonic catalog but here you have a whole series of them without any of what you’d call “songs” populating the mix.
The album goes by too fast, for me, and I end up listening to it at least one-and-a-half to two times. In summary, if you enjoy Mika Vainio and Pan Sonic in general, you’ll enjoy this sort of lo-fi inside the studio mix of audible environments. It’s more than a bit like sitting in the corner while the duo experiment.
ÄÄNET is available on Editions Mego.
