There is no theory for Pan Sonic. We have no plan. We just make the music. (Mika Vainio)

Kesto’s epic four-disc structure was inspired by 20th century artist Francis Bacon’s use of the triptych. The four full hours of this work all function as different views of the same musical ideas that are embodied in the work’s title, which can be translated as both “strength” and “duration”. The strength emerges as screeching blankets of controlled processed noise, rolling and piercing into each track in different ways for different effects. The duration, meanwhile, emerges not only in the work’s sheer length but also in the long, slow, plodding electronic tones that curl back on themselves and underlie so many of these tracks.

Those familiar with Pan Sonic’s work may detect a correlation between their use of sound and Bacon’s use of paint; the Kesto recordings represent a substantial new depth and vitality in the quality of their sound palette that brings a new-found life force and delicate violence into their music. A threatening mood floats over the onslaught of abrasive noises and saturated drums. As denser clouds gather while the tension escalates to become almost unbearable they create density out of silence, chaos out of vacuum. The harsh soundscapes might have been replaced by more placid ones, but the disturbance is more palpable than ever.

Taken as individual works, the first three discs function like a triptych, harnessing the same core sounds yet interpreting those sounds in fundamentally different ways. Hence, on the first two discs, one hears different combinations of propulsive, punchy beats, ear-splitting howls, murmuring low, sweeping tones, a crumbling racket, and a whole lot of random snaps and whirls, chops, with an occasional crash. Finally, the last two discs remove many of the pulsing rhythms and replace them with acre after acre of slowly-building, incremental tones that build up and up and up until they become some kind of hypnotic melody (crunching and mumbling and roaring like a crackinduced bowel movement).

Pan Sonic have remained true to their original and pioneering use of their special hand-made, purpose-built analog tone generators which owe more to old radio-style sets than synthesizers, with the occasional use of digital samplers for the more rhythmic sounds. They are very much into sounds felt by the body and the effect of various frequencies on the brain.