Clocking in at nearly five minutes shy of four hours and devolving across four CDs, time-wise Pan Sonic’s ‘Kesto’ constitutes all of the first six Beatles albums and half of St. Pepper’s. Not that I’m drawing any direct comparisons, just offering another perspective with which to contextualise the Finnish duo’s magnum opus.
Initially conceived as a triptych (in recognition of the artist Francis Bacon) ‘Kesto’s’ final quartet of discs has more in common with an installation in the Turbine Hall of The Tate Modern than it does with anything as crassly commercial as ‘pop’, even if their sound may be tied to the genre ‘Industrial’. Like those Tate installations, Kesto needs a spacious setting in which it can be displayed, analysed and ultimately judged.
Its elevation to such surroundings is heralded by the sumptuous box-set packaging that features the photography of fellow Finn and artist, Anne Hamalainen. The recording process should also be considered: they record live to DAT tape with no over-dubbing. In other words you hear it as they played it.
So what do we have here? Is this ‘music’ or is this ‘modern art’? Is it ground-breaking or is it folly? To be honest it’s none of these and all of them. The sheer length of the album and the conscious lack of melody make it nigh on impossible to absorb the content in one sitting. (Appropriately, the word ‘kesto’ means “strength” or “duration”) It’s achingly modern to the point of being instantly redundant, in the same way that the latest technology is defunct as soon as it becomes mass-marketed; there is always something faster, smaller, lighter or smarter. Or in Pan Sonic’s case: longer.
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Nor is the album really ground-breaking in its audacious presentation. Four CDs is no more than the equivalent of the 1970’s quadruple gatefold; surely live-streaming download only is the de rigeur zeitgeist of distribution.
Kesto’s primary musical theme is disintegration, from the violent onslaught of its opening to the breathless silence of its ending: a slow death played out across the four CDs. 240 minutes worth of industrial noise is hardly required to make that point. Or is it? Maybe in the final summation when you take all these issues into account there is nowhere else for the genre, the format and the concept to go after this release.
Perhaps, despite its interminable length, ‘Kesto’ is meant to be nothing more than a full stop.
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