Mika Vainio, Kevin Drumm, Axel Dörner, Lucio Capece

PAN continue to take action against unoriginal, conformist sound with the release of an incredible, inspired ensemble piece recorded in Venice on May 12th, 2008 by four like-minded and exceptionally talented musicians. Make no mistake; it's an absolute shocker. Converging from four different and extreme disciplines, Finnish hardware boffin Mika Vanio (née of Pan Sonic) and American dronesmith Kevin Drumm handle electronics, while avant-garde jazz player Axel Dörner is credited with trumpet and computer, and the Argentinian ultra-minimalist Lucio Capece with soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, and sruti box. Together they investigate sound at its near-subatomic and electro-acoustic level, devoid of anything so banal as narrative, and yet with a transcendent, elemental quality that's utterly absorbing throughout. Opening to a visceral mangle of spittle and extruded air (which could just as easily be granular electronic processing if I hadn't seen Capece makes these sound in a live setting) and travelling through disorienting industrial assaults to alarming dissonance and glacial subsonics, they acutely challenge the listener's perceptions, using a range of oblique and smoothly segued transitions between sonic blocks, tones and drones to make us question the role of environmental sound in everyday life: how it can become music in its own right, and how the use of both synthesized and natural acoustic space can expand notions of time and retune our physical spatial awareness. Having previously only worked in separate duos - Mika Vainio & Lucio Capece most notably on 'Trahnie', Capece and Dörner on a residence with Keith Rowe working on Cornelius Cardew's 'Treatise', and Drumm & Dörner on an influential album for Erstwhile in 2000 - it's a testament to their shared vision that this record works so, so well, incisively reaffirming our existence from the molecular, near-bioacoustic level out. We're floored, think we might some time to ourselves after listening to this. Massively recommended. (Boomkat)