Ilpo Väisänen
Syntetisaattori Musiikkia Kuopiosta
Kvitnu

I guess Ilpo Väisänen is "the other guy" in the minimalist electronic pioneers duo of Pan Sonic, now defunct. While Mika Vainio has released tons of solo stuff and collaborated with seemingly everyone, this is Väisänen's first solo outing since Asuma in 2001. (He did release a couple of records under the VVV and I-LP-O in Dub monikers).

Syntetisaattori Musiikkia Kuopiosta arrives with little fanfare, a 12" EP with two sidelong exercises in bone dry dub minimalism. Rythmic structures get to spin around their own axis until they stop, and then it's on to the next one. It's like a musical conveyor belt, and the industrial metaphor is not randomly chosen. The splashes of texture and ambient background are sparsely utilized, but also all the more effective.

Some may miss the violent outbursts of circuitry overloading from the first couple of Pan Sonic albums (in this case it's safe to assume that some refers to me). That was a different time, and this is a different and more subtle musical beast, but Väisänen's interest in the inner workings of rhytmical machinery remains the same.

Copyright © 2017 Thor-Eirik Johnsen