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BARRY ADAMSON +
The icelandic label Kitchen Motors ongoing Motorlab experiment is based
on the idea of exposing leftfield musicians to previously unexplored
sonic turf. The first few volumes launched members of Sigur Rós, Múm,
Stilluppsteypa and The Hafler Trio onto uncharted waters. Still, the pairing of
Barry Adamson and Pan Sonic is their most inspired to date. Through his work with
Magazine and The Bad Seeds, and his soundtracks for David Lynch and Allison
Anders, Adamson has carved out an oeuvre that squats uncomfortably between 60s
lipstick pop, panoramic symphonies and grainy urban bruising. Wherever he lands,
his footprints are unmistakable. As such, his pairing with the iconoclastic
Pan Sonic is a volatile one. [David Keenan, Wire, jan 2002]
BARRY ADAMSON + PAN SONIC, "MOTORLAB #3" You know those collaborations you read or hear about and you think to yourself 'now that's gonna be cool' but then you finally hear it and are completely underwhelmed? Ok then, lets file this one in that bin. Iceland's Kitchen Motors label has been unifying and challenging different artists with their commendable Motorlab series, this being the 3rd installment. They approached Adamson and Pan Sonic to compose a vocal piece for Iceland's Hljómeyki choir and that they did this past April in Reykjavik. For about 12 and 1/2 minutes, "The Hymn of the 7th Illusion" aimlessly treks through windy terrain, simple vocal 'ahhhs' and bass reverberations being somewhat of a guiding light. It's a minimal bore that never achieves any sort of tension or serves any sort of purpose. After a silent 24 second interlude, an even more dull 23 minute glitchified remix by The Hafler Trio only adds insult to injury. A tremendous waste of potential all around that doesn't even begin to tap the talents of those involved. Me, I semi-patiently continue to wait for the new Adamson album, "Nothing Hill", due out early next year. [Mark Weddle, BRAIN V04I49 - 12162001]
Barry Adamson + MOTORLAB BEGAN life in 1999 as a series of live events held in Reykjavik, Iceland and organised by the multimedia think-tank Kitchen Motors to initiate interesting new collaborations within Iceland's vibrant avant-garde community. After documenting these performances with 1 and 2 the organisers changed tack, approaching Barry Adamson and Pan Sonic to write for an Icelandic choir. Needless to say The Hymn Of The 7th Illusion ended up as way more than just a straightforward choral piece. With Pan Sonic's distinctive electronic imprint added afterwards The Hymn...contrasts the choir's angelic tones with a dark, atmospheric throb straight out of a John Carpenter score, like someone simultaneously mixing the soundtracks to The Thing and The Omen. Although brief at just over 12 minutes, The Hafler Trio's remix - an extended, reassembled electronc collage - offers ample value for your money. [Andrew Carden, MOJO magazine, Feb 2000]
BARRY ADAMSON + PAN SONIC: Motorlab #3 Released in late 2001 on the Kitchen Motors label, this recording brings together the talents of Barry Adamson and Pan sonic in a piece titled "The Hymn of the 7th Illusion". Tracing back the history of the hymn to pagan times reveals that they were sung to the basic accompaniment of a cythara (harp). Here Adamson and Pan sonic have seen fit to update this uncomplicated setup to choir and electronics. The choir featured is the Icelandic Hljómeyki Choir, conducted by Hördur Bragason and arranged by Adamson. The arrangement comes in the form of a simple, wordless hymn, accentuated by long stretches of voice that fall softly behind the proceedings. The choir’s work is clean and pure, distant and sympathetic. It sits in ideal contrast to the electronic rumblings brought in by Pan sonic. To the overall benefit of the piece, the electronics are not so heavy as to overpower or lessen the impact of the hymnal nature of the work. It would have been quite easy to overtake the delicate beauty of the human voice with a dose of powerful electronics, but all involved have exercised dramatic restraint. After the initial twelve-minute production, we are treated to a vigorous re-working of the piece by The Hafler Trio titled "The Illusion of the 7th Hymn". The piece is extended to twice its original length, and succeeds for reasons completely different than the original one does. Here, the basic hymnal setup is removed; the choir is still present, but it has been worked into a variety of shapes the singers would never have imagined they could be formed into. Where Pan sonic’s electronic rumblings were just that in the original, The Hafler Trio has seen fit to flip that idea on its head and create the pulsing rumbles out of the choir’s voices instead. Things become quite heated about sixteen minutes into the piece, with some attention-getting sound bursts that have been arranged into a rhythmic construct. As with the original piece, the remix also benefits from not teetering to the side of overindulgence. While it’s easier to recognize the symbiosis of the elements in the original track, the remix also works on this level, but with a much thinner line drawn between the choral and the electronic. At the end of it all, we are left with a release that is first class, with everyone involved in top form. [Vils M DiSanto, Incursion music review, issue 045, 04 – 17 february 2002]
BARRY ADAMSON/PAN SONIC - The idea of Motorlab is to create a new kind of electricity between musicians/artists by introducing them to elements they had previously left untouched. Well, here's one that appealed immediately - such a unique combination of talent cannot be allowed to escape, so I took it home with high hopes. And how carefully made it is, and (the basic recordings are) live, too. The first (title) track, a blend of an Icelandic choir performing Barry's (treated) microtonal, urgent score is slowly infiltrated, first with an electronic breath and then by well-rounded bassburps that evolve into a satisfactory crescendo before the scary humhum returns. Someone directly connected to this broadsheet dismissed this track as Gothic' - and although I can't qualify it, not having the ilk for such silly and affected gruesomeness - I do think he's being too simplistic, being of the opinion myself that it is a highly successful, contemporary hybrid. Hats off! (Oh! I almost forgot to mention, there are two other tracks: the second is a short sigh, and the third, apparently a remix by Andrew McKenzie, ranges from the sublime to the Wendy (yes, definitely after the operation!) Carlos - a meandering piece that starts in a non-specific place and doesn't travel that far in ordure to stay there). Nonetheless, this shiny is still worth getting, even if it's only for the first track. [MP, Vital Weekly, number 303, week 50]
BARRY ADAMSON / PAN SONIC "The Hymn of the 7th Illusion" A classical choral work, modern and abstract and sometimes breathlessly gorgeous. The way Adamson (Birthday Party, Bad Seeds, film composition for David Lynch) structures the Hljomeyki Choir make that any spaces he leaves ache for their presence, and each note they sing (crushes of unison harmony) press relief into one's ears. This work has antecedents in Meredith Monk and Robert Wilson (with and without each other's collaboration), and the expanded, booming THX chord you hear before a movie (composed by Andy Moorer, btw). As the first piece settles, you hear Pan Sonic's contribution to the piece, which has been there all along, only subtler, come to the fore. They take the choir's sounds and add subtle layers that move around the singers, snaking in and out. The second half of the CD is my favorite, where Adamson and Pan Sonic give their baby to Hafler Trio, who move voices around, occasional cover/vibrate them with a different kind of digital interference, and make something that is rawly beautiful, capable of startling the listener's expectations without actually startling the listener. [RE, OtherMusic.com]
Barry Adamson + Pan Sonic Kitchen Motors is a promising new Icelandic label and their Motorlab series focuses on pitting avant-garde and electronic artists against each other. Not unlike Konkurrent's "In The Fishtank" series, the results are anyone's guess. Motorlab 3 consists of a single piece of music and its remix. While this is the same format of, say, the new N'Sync single, the sheer length—the original is 12 minutes, the remix 23—and experimental nature of the recording casts the notion of the "CD single" pleasurably on its head. This collaboration leans closer to avant-garde classical music than most of the music reviewed at Junkmedia and no, there aren't even beats on the remix (Little Johnny: "but I thought that's what remixes were for! To give lame-ass tracks new life with the addition of an up-front breakbeat from an old funk record and/or house beat! Uncle Steve: "No, Johnny. No, that's not what remixes are for"). The original piece of music, entitled "The Hymn of the 7th Illusion", is a collaboration between film composer Barry Adamson and experimental electronic duo Pan Sonic. It's as minimal as they come: Adamson contributes some droning, vaguely avant-classical choir arrangements and Pan Sonic offer some low-end rumble. The two sounds spend the first eight minutes alternating, as if abstractly conversing on very important topics. Things begin to heat up (or at least do something) as the two elements are layered one on top of the other, but the composition remains stuck in place and sounds very much like two disparate and unrelated elements that do little to strengthen each other. The remix, by Germany's Hafler Trio, is a bit more interesting. Titled "The Illusion of the 7th Hymn", it weaves wobbly and strong drones together before leveling them to start anew. At times it sounds eerily like the soundtrack to "the monolith" from Stanely Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the intermitent digital crackles and processing bring the listener forcefully up to the present tense. If you are interested in abstract and experimental electronic music, the Hafler Trio deliver a solid remix. If not, they will do little to convince you that this whole "serious digital music" thing is worth your time. [Ben Sterling, www.junkmedia.org, december 2001]
Another odd choral collaboration, Motorlab #3 (Kitchen Motors), unites Barry Adamson and Pan Sonic. Their work for chor and electronics opens new visuals. [Leopold Froehlich, Playboy, US/Canada, March 2002]
PAN SONIC + BARRY ADAMSON + HAFLER TRIO ***The latest in Kitchen Motor's Motorlab series of collaborations finds Finnish noise manipulators PAN SONIC hooking up wih film composer and former MAGAZINE and BAD SEEDS member BARRY ADAMSON. Features "The Hymn of the 7th Illusion" a vocal piece composed for and recorded by an Icelandic choir, and then taken by Pan Sonic into the studio for some added electronica. Also included is a brilliant remix of the same by HAFLER TRIO.
A unique album by Barry Adamson (Bad Seeds/Magazine/film composer) and Pan Sonic (Finnish electronic artists) commissioned by Kitchen Motors to travel to Reykjavik and compose a piece for the Hljomeyki choir. A dark choral work bringing to mind Adamson's film scores blend seamlessly with Pan Sonic's deep pulsing, brooding electronics. The work truly comes to life under the re-editing skills of the Hafler Trio which shifts from drifting cinematic ambience through to cut up static rhythmic bursts. Digipak. 2001. [Editorial Review, amazon.com]
Barry Adamson got us used to a certain type of dark soundtrack ambiance sustained by occasional techno parts. He's definitely one of my favorite artists. Well, this last CD, only available by imports (for now, at least) is a whole new experiment. This project done with Pan Sonic was based on the principle of "introducing elements they had previously left untouched". You bet. For this album, female voices from Iceland are the basis of a strange amalgalm that doesn't seem to ever take off. It'd surely make a good soundtrack because you'll the discomfort and creepy atmosphere Adamson is so fond of, but it's definitely not in the usual Adamson's guidelines. Definitely not cool... but freezing, it is ! Intriguing music, hard to classify (as my review must suggest...) but if you're a fan of The Negro inside Me or Oedipus Schoedipus, you are authorized to stay away. I bought it because it's Adamson, so I'll support the guy weherever he goes, but I hope he'll go back to the kind of music that made him one of the best "soundtrack-type" composers along with David Holmes. This is New Age on a bad trip, or a strange dream while sitting on an iceberg. [Marc A Godin from Montreal, Quebec Canada, February 2, 2002, amazon.com]
BARRY ADAMSON + PAN SONIC "Motorlab #3" **** This third volume in the Motorlab series (see also U0101) is not a live document but a studio project. It features two long tracks, with an ultrashort 0'09" recording of someone taking a breath inbetween (without brackets, the title reads "'"). Who knows, it might even be Iceland's electronic music pioneer Magnús Blöndal Jóhannsson, whose brain waves adorn the sleeve art... "The hymn of the 7th illusion" (12'20") is a performance by the Hljómeyki choir as conducted by Hörõur Bragason of a composition by Barry Adamson, Ilpo Väisänen & Mika Vainio, with darkish electronics by the Finnish duo and extra treatments by the Mancunian. (The Bad Seed and ex-Magazine member also did the vocal arrangements.) It's a gripping track which reminds of the Gyorgy Ligeti tracks used in "2001: A Space Odyssey". The Hafler Trio's remix of that track, "The illusion of the 7th hymn", is lengthier (23'01") but also patchier, as if it were cut up in various episodes. As a whole, I like this release more than Pan Sonic's collaboration with Bruce Gilbert on "The Oval Recording" [by IBM, Mego (MEGO-033) 2000]. [pv, UZINE 01.24]
ADAMSON, BARRY + PAN SONIC The Hymn Of The Seventh Illusion From its beginnings, the Icelandic arts organization Kitchen Motors has been pairing off interesting cross-platform artists who may not have otherwise had the opportunity to work together. "The Hymn Of The Seventh Illusion" was a commission by Kitchen Motors for Pan Sonic and Barry Adamson to score a composition for the Hljomeyki Choir from Iceland. Surprised yet delighted to be working together, Adamson (best known for coining the term "imaginary filmscore" within his amazing noir albums such as "Moss Side Story) and Pan Sonic (the Finnish pioneers of ultra-minimal techno) had arrived an amazing piece that could have been a snippet from the eerie GYORGY LIGETI chorales that were so instrumental to the sense of alienation within Kubrick's "2001." Utilizing the natural reverberation from Digraneskirkja church in Reykjavik, Pan Sonic and Adamson gently fluttered sustained vocal tones amidst the space, occasionally allowing for the choir to delve into a simple haunting melody, whilst Pan Sonic sets down a very subdued electronic back beat. Hopefully, the Kitchen Motors collaboration between Adamson and Pan Sonic won't end here! Compounding the collaborative spirit, Kitchen Motors employed The Hafler Trio (whose solo member Andrew McKensie now lives in Iceland) to remix "The Hymn Of The Seventh Illusion." As McKensie has been moving further away from the fictional research projects and more towards the electro-acoustic studies from Luigi Nono, The Hafler Trio is a perfect fit. This remix has stretched and abstracted the polyphony of the chorus into a very creepy extended drone collage. Very nice work! [Jim's favorites at Aquarius Records]
Pan Sonic / Barry Adamson / Hafler Trio - "Motorlab 3" - CD (KM-004)
MOTORLAB #3 This is genuinely odd music. Although the artists, especially Pan Sonic, are famous for their (mostly electronic) experiments in the past, nothing could have prepared me for this. As the first track 'The Hymn of the 7th Illusion' starts, a female choir is singing chromatic vowels: Aaa! Aaaa! Aaa! The melody (as such) is extremely simple, consisting only of 3-4 notes most of the time, and for considerable time that's all there is to hear. Then the male voices join in, resulting in a mixed choir, and the vocal exercises continue. After which, slowly, one by one, different instruments appear. A minimalist bassline repeats itself upon the kind of drone, the balefulness of which derives from its undefinability. The melody of the vocal exercises (some of them actually quite cruel, and nearly all somewhat unpleasant) keeps surfacing, making 'The Hymn...' a hymn. The Hafler Trio remix is about as minimalist and bleak as the original, with more emphasis on hacking and sound processing.
A very stark, minimal and strange record. Certainly very different from..
well, about everything I know. There is some resemblance to dark
ambient, but the sheer, perhaps calculated, weirdness of this record
sweeps all comparisons away. Genre-defying. [14 Mar 2002, erkki luuk, SONOMU - sound noise music]
Barry Adamson, Pan Sonic Very odd, if not wild (queer) album has been recorded by some people of supreme importance. The secret inventor of hip-hop and Nick Cave's colleague - Barry Adamson, finnish minimalists - Pan Sonic, icelandic choir Hljomeyki conducted by Hordur Bragason and the oldest electronic avant-gardists Hafler Trio. That's simply an icelandic studio called Kitchen Motors undertakes an experiment, based on the creative "alliance between the most diverse musicians" and that is the 3rd, by the way, cd produced within this framework. The track "The Hymn of the 7th Illusion" opens with the choir, which is pathologically disturbing. It sounds for some time, when from somewhere behind creep out gloomy and non-less disturbing Pan Sonic's sound-gadgets. Without getting into the details, one can tell, that everything is built on such interplay of icelandic choir's voices and finnish electrical vibrations. What Barry Adamson is doing here is a mystery. When you are listening to the works such as this one you can't get rid of the feeling that somebody is seriously experiment on you. And the result of this experiment has a very peculiar individual consequences - that's why it cannot be evaluated objectively - whether it's good or bad or does it worth to listen to this disk or not. One thing is clear - neither Adamson nor Pan Sonic nor especially Hafler Trio undertake actions for no particular reason. On the disk's cover there's a photograph of the Iceland's electronic music pioneer Magnus Blondal Johannsson during listening to this disk in a Reykjavik's neurophysiology clinic. Well, whatever musicians are - listeners shall be the same. [Andrei Pirumov, Moscow's Afisha, N3 2002]
BARRY ADAMSON + PAN SONIC This is absolutely amazing-no surprise to those familiar with the performer/composers here, of course. The harsh electronic soundscapes of Finland's Pan Sonic and the talents of Barry Adamson (wrote the score for David Lynch's Lost Highway, also formerly of Magazine and Bad Seeds) come together here to result in three chilling, bone-throbbing, extremely tense pieces, utilizing the vocals of an Icelandic choir of male and female voices and a host of electronic and traditional instruments. If this doesn't surface as the soundtrack for a really frightening movie about God somewhere, I've lost all faith in the film industry, and a few other things, too. Reviewed by Holly Day
Barry Adamson and Pan Sonic If purgatory is designed like a waiting room complete with uncomfortable chairs and last year's catalog of "Home Furnishing," Motorlab #3 is the music that plays between loudspeaker announcements. Well, at least I think that was the concept behind the collaboration between imaginary soundtrack visionary, Barry Adamson, and Finnish avant ambient electricians Pan Sonic. This third release in the Motorlab series develops the theme of uncertainty. It explores the schizophrenic tension and anxiety of being caught in between days. Unlike the haunting nightstalker dreamscapes of Aphex Twin ambient works and Autechre, Motorlab #3 is a more nuanced, less immediately interpretable gesture. Its use of both distance and accessibility provides the force behind the work. Unfortunately, however, the disc seems sloppy, immature and undeveloped. Like Pan Sonic's latest release, Aaltopiiri, the different movements on the two tracks never seem to really work as a whole. Listening to the disc made me feel like something was missing. The disparity and dissonance seemed forced and unnatural. The development in the drama was like unresolvable jump-cuts. It made me wish that the visual accompanied these imaginary soundtracks. Instead, the lack of a supplementary text made the composition feel incomplete, and lack the necessary overriding consistency. Since this is not the case, Motorlab #3 is a series of tensions that never resolve, or congeal to form the greater work I imagined such a concept piece could potentially realize. Reviewed by Maxwell Yim 3.11.02
Barry Adamson / Pan Sonic: Motorlab # 3 With this very icelandic item (released on the Iceland-based label Kitchen Motor, featuring a remix of the Icelandic Hafler Trio and bearing a photograph of the alleged "pioneer composer of electronic music in iceland", the minimalistic Pan Sonic teams with Mute-artist Barry Adamson for one piece (dismissing the 30 seconds long interlude), which is later remix by The Hafler Trio. Wherehas one could have expected some weird electronic manipulations with this collaboration, it is its subtitle from the Kitchen Motors site that fits it best: "A piece for choir and electronics". "The hymn of the 7th illusions", which is the core of this disc, is an extremely soundtrack-ish piece featuring only a choir recorded specially for this track (and not sampled). Answering to thes very angelic and definitely religious minded voices are heavy and very dynamic low beats (bearing the sign of Pan Sonic), played in short and looped lines. Once more, this track would fit perfectly as a score for a short movie, and reminds me a lot of the one John Carpenter wrote for his "Prince of Darkness": slow, "threatening", intense and very dark. This is not what I was expecting from these two bands, but the track is beautiful and the production is flawless. However, I can't help but think that 12 minutes is a bit too long and that some more variations would have been welcome. The Halfer Trio track, twice as long, is far stranger and more broken, using only parts of the original tracks (mainly the beats) and totally discarding the choirs. Full of oscillations, changes and loops, this track is nicely done and reminds far more of the usual Hafler Trio material than of the track by Adamson and Pan Sonic. Sometimes sounding like an out of tune, randomly set up radio receiver, the track brings back the beats toward the end. Not a bad mix, but not something that particularely impressed me. I had very high expectations concerning this release, and I find it disappointing that the actual collaboration is only one track based on one theme, however long the track and interesting the theme are. The Halfer Trio is a nice companion, but I would have liked the CD better if it had contained more material of the quality of "The hymn of the 7th illusion". Anyway, nice stuff, but I more or less feel that I paid for a whole CD to get just 12 minutes of sound. Reviewed by Nicolas, April 3rd, 2002
This isn't your everyday sound-clash. The third in the Motorlab series from Iceland's Kitchen Motors label pits fake imaginary/non-imaginary film soundtrack composer Barry Adamson against Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen of the Finnish minimal techno duo Pan Sonic. Kitchen Motors asked the artists to travel to Reykjavík and write a piece of music for a choir. Once written, Adamson, Vainio, Väisänen, and Halldór Víkingsson recorded the piece ("The Hymn of the 7th Illusion"), as performed by Hljómeyki and conducted by Hörður Bragason. A haunted, wordless succession of boyish escalating "ahhs" and "ohhs," Vainio and Väisänen took the spooked choir recording into the NTVO studio and added a repetitive, suspenseful, reverberant succession of electronic throbs that appear, evaporate, and return throughout the piece's 12 minutes. A number of slight atmospheric touches add to the cinematic feel, which Adamson no doubt played a role in. It's hushed and unresolved tension at its best, and it practically begs to be used in a film where paranoia is an overriding theme. Not quite as engrossing is the other track, "The Illusion of the 7th Hymn," which is a remix of the original done by experimentalists the Hafler Trio. Throughout the span of 24 minutes, the remix goes through several shifts of minimal drone and noise, cresting around the 12-minute mark with a passage that shapeshifts both the choir and the electronic thrums into a disturbed choppiness. As an interesting footnote, the gent pictured on the cover is electronic composer Magnús Blöndal Jóhannsson. As evident by the photo that shows pickups attached to his head, the mad scientists of Kitchen Motors scanned his brain as he listened to Adamson and Pan Sonic's collaboration. The resulting brain waves are displayed on one of the accompanying cards within the packaging. ~ Andy Kellman, All Music Guide
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