Mika Vainio Wrestles Chicks on Speed

What Is Music 2005
Melbourne, Australia, various venues

The initial visceral thrill of hearing Pan Sonic's stentorian electronics flooding the room, bursts of white noise scarifying huge edifices of primal rhythm, eventually gave way to a tiresome structure -- insert beat, efface with scouring distortion, repeat process. Pan Sonic's Mika Vainio did offer one of the festival's most enduring moments, invading the stage and wrestling with members of Chicks On Speed during the latter group's punk-electro number "Turn Of The Century". The Chicks's show is usually pure pleasure, but the trio looked as though they were going through the motions, until the shuffle-tech of "Fashion Rules" shocked them into overdrive.

- from live review by Jon Dale, The Wire, April 2004