PAN SONIC AND RYOICHI KUROKAWA @ RML September 23, 2006

RML & Asphodel present up close and personal:

PAN SONIC
and
Ryoichi Kurokawa ( cross media / surround cinema )

at Recombinant Media Labs
in San Francisco

Saturday Sept. 23rd, Sunday Sept 24th, Wednesday Sept 27th

9pm -- $20 advance / or at the door

reservations are strongly suggested at:
www.asphodel.com
www.recombinantmedia.net

call 650 255 8947 for location and event info

Finnish minimalist techno group Pan Sonic are among the most active and well-known artists from that country's tiny experimental techno underground, and the first to reach acclaim at an international level. Pursuing the jagged edges of minimal techno and hardcore, the group have earned an enduring association with industrial and noise music through their incorporation of concise production techniques and power-tool electronics, landing them in 1995 on the English Mute label's experimental subsidiary Blast First! (most of their catalog to date has since appeared there).

Live, their music can feel as physical as a weather system. This enveloping escalation of physicality seems a kind of materialism, even though there is nothing to see other than the projected image of beats activating an oscilloscope: the rawness of sawtooth, the sumptuous melted wax massage of pure sine, the error sounds of contact and broken contact. Inevitably, there is a temptation to listen for signs of refinement or romanticism, simply because the music goes beyond process and phenomenology, broadcasting a manifesto for the poetry of electricity.

Although their minimalism is executed with elegance and precision, Pan Sonic nurture a rougher, clumsy side. These maligned qualities occupy an important place in electronic music, a field haunted through its history by the deathly consequences of unlimited order, reason and control. The non-academic influences of reggae, rockabilly and the legendary New York duo, Suicide, ensure the opposite.

Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen cultivate a precarious balance between the elegant formalism of their own constructions and the threatened proliferating chaos of feedback. sun stroke, odorous nausea that overpowers, then thins to the buzz of a thermionic valve on the threshold of filament purgatory.

PAN SONIC have remained true to their original and pioneering use of their special handmade, purpose built analog tone generators, more from the old radio style set than synthesizers, with the occasional use of digital samplers for the more rhythmic sounds.

They are very much into sounds felt by the body and the effect of various frequencies on the brain.

There is no theory for Pan Sonic. We have no plan. We just make the music." (Mika Vainio)

Ryoichi Kurokawa is an amazing audiovisual artist living in Osaka, Japan His works take on multiple forms like screening works, recordings, installation and live performance. Kurokawa composes time based sculpture with 3dimensional generated materials and field recorded sources, . Kurokawa accepts sound and imagery as a united form and constructs very exquisite and precise computer based works with his cinesonic language. Based on natural images he transfigures and distorts original analogue material with digital processes. This – very much alike the human brain – represents memory where visual and auditory perception is reconstructed in an unconscious way. Thus virtual images and reality merge in an uncontrollable manner.

Official Website: http://www.recombinantmedia.net