Following a world tour (from Barcelona to Singapore to Easter Island to Buenos Aires to Iceland to Istanbul), a move to Berlin (from Barcelona), and three years since their last album (Aaltopiiri), Pan Sonic returned in grand fashion with an astonishing four-disc album, Kesto (234.48:4). The album's title alludes to what lies in store: translated roughly from Pan Sonic's native Finnish to English, Kesto means strength or duration, and the (234.48:4) subtitle refers to the album's epic running time. Moreover, the album is elaborately packaged in a sturdy fold-open box highlighted by the otherworldly photography of Anne Hämäläinen, and the song titles are roughly translated to English for the curious. So, before you've even listened to Kesto (234.48:4), the craftsmanship and thoughtfulness at hand make it easy to appreciate what Pan Sonic members Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen have offered this go-round. The duo's past albums -- Aaltopiiri (2001), A (1999), and Kulma (1997) -- had all been impressive, no doubt, but none was quite as bold as Kesto (234.48:4). Nor was any as indulgent. After all, four discs of new music are a lot to ingest, even for the most rapacious music consumers. But that's precisely the point here -- Vainio and Väisänen have aimed to totally immerse their listeners in the sound world of Pan Sonic. They pace the CDs accordingly: the first one is an abrasive onslaught of crafted noise-beats-ambience that is often awesome, in terms of control and volatility especially; the second one tones down the noise; the third disc moves completely away from the louder, noisier aspects of the first two discs, revealing an underbelly of dark ambience; and the fourth disc is further minimal, just one hourlong milieu of shimmering dark ambience appropriately titled "Säteily/Radiation."
While it's the discs themselves that are most distinguishable from one another, the songs within them are likewise distinguishable, albeit sequenced logically into the separate discs. So you get a few different ways to listen to Kesto (234.48:4). You can listen to it in one epic setting and follow its trajectory of initially intense, drawn-out release. You can listen to it one disc at a time, whimsically selecting a disc according to mood. Or you can shuffle the four discs of tracks and sequence for yourself a wild ride through disparate moods. Any way you listen to Kesto (234.48:4), however, it's an album that demands some submission. This is artistic music that's quite experimental, even for IDM. Granted, that's nothing new for Pan Sonic, as anyone who has heard any of their past couple releases can tell you. Even so, Kesto (234.48:4) may indeed be the group's most accomplished work, as well as least accessible. The scope is tremendous, and it's traversed with timeless ease over its prolonged course. There's probably more Pan Sonic here than some listeners need -- the two discs of ambience being a bit much -- but every minute of music is elemental to the mountainous whole, and fascinating in detail for that very reason. Everything here is in its right place, making Kesto (234.48:4) perhaps the only Pan Sonic album you'd ever need to own, for every style of music the group has ever recorded is presented at length and it's all produced as masterfully as ever. This is a colossal achievement for an already storied duo with a flowering legacy.
© Jason Birchmeier /TiVo