Pan Sonic: Aaltopiiri

Part minimalists, part purist ascetics, the artists of the electronic "glitch" movement—those who make the most of the least, transforming snaps, crackles, and pops into skipping soundscapes—don't always seem to take pleasure into account when crafting their sublimely chilly works. Yet by starting out with so little, they often have no choice but to develop and grow, trading the formalism of their formative works for music of arguably greater impact, if equally debatable import. Pan Sonic (formerly Panasonic, until an obscure electronics company threatened legal action) produces tracks that often sound like the menacing hisses, clanks, and hums of a boiler room, or an old water heater whose vaguely metallic music echoes off invisible walls. With 1999's A and especially the new Aaltopiiri, however, Finnish artists Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen have taken their clicks and cuts and applied them to something a bit more tangible. Like Germany's Stefan Betke (a.k.a. Pole), Pan Sonic seems steeped in the theory (if not the sound) of dub, crafting its tracks out of the cracks and spaces others might choose to leave between the songs. Titles remain irrelevant, but the ghostly rhythms of Aaltopiiri indicate that Pan Sonic may at last serve some purpose greater than scaring the neighbors, even if haunted-house music remains its forte. Thomas Brinkmann is no less obsessed with using less: The scant liner notes on Klick boast that the entire album was made with just two decks, an isolator, a mixer, and some effects. Brinkmann obsesses over the locked grooves at the end of each vinyl side, where the sounds of the needle bobbing back and forth as the record spins offer their own distinct pleasures. Again like fellow countryman Betke, Brinkmann is a tinkerer, making his music as much by fiddling with technology and tools as through active composition. Klick's sound is a bit warmer than Pan Sonic's, if only because Brinkmann's broken records bear a greater relationship to the actual physicality of the pieces: Each of the 10 tracks might accurately be described as dizzying, due to the omnipresent and familiar rhythmic "fwlump" of the record cycling around. Brinkmann embellishes his base with the occasional found sound or gritty effect, but the disc resonates as much as a relaxant as it does as an agitator, and pleasant subliminal melodies and patterns eventually emerge from the static, skips, and not-so-random noise.