Music
Pan Sonic cite their main influences from the early 1980s, with industrial acts like Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzende Neubauten and Suicide to reggae, hip-hop and dub. The late outsider rockabilly artist Hasil Adkins is also cited, as well as country music star Johnny Cash. Vainio often remarks that their music is a merger of these two schools of music, taking the harsh and pure sounds typical of industrial techno and spacing them out into longer, subdued soundscapes familiar to instrumental reggae and dub.
Some of their equipment is made by third "extra" member Jari Lehtinen. These and other custom made instruments are responsible for creating the sounds typical to Pan Sonic's music. They also use samplers and an MPC2000 sequencer. Pan Sonic are great fans of experimentation and art performances and have done exhibitions and sound installations in museums. They have also made music for Rei Kawakubo's fashion shows.
In a musical form in which sequencing and recording music using computers is standard, the group is known for recording everything live, straight to DAT (Digital Audio Tape) using home-made and modified synthesizers and effect units.
In the late 1980s, as part of a "sound performance", the duo spent 10 hours in a garage, exposed to low-frequency (13 Hz) noise at 125 decibels. They performed a gig in London's East End from an armoured car using a 5000 watt sound system allegedly "similar" to the type used by the police to disorient rioters.
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Famous quotes containing the word music:
“Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“The manner in which Americans “consume” music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie—it’s consumed that way without any regard for how and why it’s made.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1994)
“It is hard to describe the thrill of creative joy which the artist feels when the conviction seizes her that at last she has caught the very soul of the character she wishes to portray, in the music and action which reveal it.”
—Maria Jeritza (1887–1982)