Pan sonic: Kuvaputki trailer (2008)
Edward Quist's DVD Kuvaputki ("Cathode Ray Tube"), filmed on Pan sonic's 1999 tour, is out now.
Press release notes:
Kuvaputki is a hyper-real multi-angle DVD environment. Pan sonic, Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen, are immersed in the imagery of the cathode which seems to live and infect their physicality over the course of three parallel films as they merge with their own extreme sound and into Quist's sinister vision.
Earplug magazine writes, "Directed by Edward Quist and co-produced by Scissor Sisters' Derek Gruen (aka Del Marquis), Kuvaputki began as a documentary about Pan Sonic's famously immersive live shows.
As a result, "a number of motion graphics were developed that would sync with the live documented sound and performance," says Quist. "From there, the idea evolved much further to include a kind of purely audio-visual narrative that included characters and suggests [the] inner life [that] goes on in a TV, as living energy. The various stages of t.he cathode process visually unfold." That process plays out across three tracks shot between New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Finland, each accessible in real-time as a discrete viewing angle. The structure of the three simultaneous angles — which spin live footage into ghostly projections — is such that images are layered "so that one might be adding, reducing, or revealing elements of the layers."
Boomkat writes, "American digital artist Edward Quist hooked up with the mighty Pan Sonic for this, their first ever DVD release, developing accompanying imagery for the duo's monumental experiments in synthesis.
The main feature is the forty-minute audiovisual album dating back to 1999, combining Quist's cathode ray visions with Pan sonic's uncompromising electronic sound world.
The first thing you'll notice is just how well the two elements fit together: the black and white abstraction of the film ties into the extremes of the music - it's at once grounded in principals of self-restriction and minimalism but always encroaches on overwhelming the viewer/listener.
In fact, sufferers of photo sensitive epilepsy will need to steer clear: in its more frantic moments the strobing can be fairly terrorising, even hypnotic. Amongst the flashes of raw electricity and grainy waveforms you might find yourself surprised by the emergence of actual live performance footage from Vainio and Väisänen, whose furtive knob turning looks positively surgical, in a setting that's somewhere between CCTV and a phantom broadcast from some distant, Hebridean outpost with a faulty transmitter.
The music is predictably wonderful, revisiting the advanced sound designs of a time around Pansonic's album, A. The combined effect of the viewing and listening experience might be compared to an analogue approximation of Ryoji Ikeda's Formula DVD, albeit with wraith-like human shapes occasionally rising from the tangled circuitry, reminding you that this is in fact a tour documentary at heart. Highly recommended."
Sonar Electronic Festival described the film as "A beautiful and unique film capturing the very essence of a Pansonic live performance... which really is quite an achievement." SxSW Music Festival calls it "An embodiment. Probably the most perfect electronic music film yet." ICA Film London: "Surprisingly watchable. Forty minutes of unswervingly modern, super-intense sound & visuals."
Duration 38.05 mins.
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