ake a quick trip over to the Mego homepage and look for some information about Ilpo Väisänen’s Asuma . The odds are that you will have a hard time finding much beyond the basics – first official solo outing from one half of Pan sonic, first record for Mego, thirty-nine minutes, and so forth. Maybe the prime ambassadors of the sovereign nation of Digitalia are afraid of the cold hard truths about Väisänen’s noise generation tactics, afraid of that backward-looking, historical-baggage-packing “a-word” – afraid of (insert look of horror) analog! The most likely explanation, however, for the lack of apologist sentiment for Väisänen and his arsenal of homemade mechanical oscillators is that Asuma’s collection of unearthly drones and disjointed beats sound for all the world as if they leaked from the hard drive of shiny new G4. For Mego headquarters, the aesthetic ends – gritty, nostalgia-free noise – apparently justify the supposedly outmoded means. Or perhaps they just thought you wouldn’t know the difference.


As fifty percent of Finland’s Pan sonic, Väisänen supplies the cracked synth drones and grainy atmospherics under which Mika Vainio’s dubbed-out dance floor beats alternately shuffle and slink. As such, one might find the curiously pulse-based nature of much of Asuma a bit beguiling in much the same way as the long-tone buzz and purr of Vainio’s solo efforts appears to run contrary to his Pan sonic personality. But like Vainio’s extending hums, with their long-range rhythms threatening to congeal into some sort of infinitely time-stretched beat, Väisänen’s pseudo-beat pulsations are far more likely to resemble slow-shifting symmetrical drones than they are anything remotely danceable. Such rhythmic patches appear not as much as an inversion of Ilpo Väisänen’s musical personality but rather as an alternate method of wringing exquisite textures from his homegrown analog technology.


On the album-bookend tracks “Autioitu 1” and “Autioitu 2,” for example, a pattering rhythmic pedal point constructed from low-frequency speaker distortions anchors a network of warbling drones flittering in and out of focus. The meticulously panned pitch-free thumps lose their rhythmic character in the square-wave haze and serve as microscopic counterpoint to the drone’s minute phase patterns. Other tracks subject a consistent pulse pattern to a series of tonal and temporal mutations. Beginning with a resonant trickle of bleats and the faintest whiff of signal noise, the squeaking loop of “Klikki” folds under a seemingly endless filter sweep until it skirts audibility and the interruption of a rough-edged whirr saves the track from imminent dissolution. Similarly, the swirling blips on “Jaettu” start as a series of scratchy, glitched-up throbs assaulted by counter-rhythmic disruptions and cools to a puddle of rounded tones augmented by icy top-end whistles. Each of these tracks displays an impressive degree of imagination as Väisänen spins out intricate, immediate soundscapes from a bare minimum of means.


The more expressly drone-oriented compositions, however, invoke slightly more mixed reactions as the occasional overtly “retro” analog gesture rises to the surface. Whereas the more rhythmic tracks brim over with microscopic detail, the drone works tend toward a decidedly more “macro” approach that too clearly betrays the analog origins of the music. While the window-rattling test drone that launches “Asumaton” would be pleasing enough on its own, it is soon accosted by unnecessary jabs from what sounds like a hyper-tremolo Hammond organ blaring from a speeding car. Fortunately, Väisänen salvages the track by piling up shimmering partials over the depths-of-the-ocean drone before the track gently recedes into the distance. Similarly, the richly resonant hum that dominates “Vallitseva” need not have been subjected to Väisänen’s modulation wheel hysterics; luckily, Väisänen again compensates with the introduction of a pleasantly distracting series of ring modulated pings. By contrast, “Tukahduttaja” is an unbroken pleasure throughout. Purrs of rapid-fire thumping tap on the eardrum as a lustrous backdrop of glassy, bass-free tones suspend themselves effortlessly in the background. Unlike its other drone-based companions, “Tukahduttaja” plays up the idiosyncratic, alien tones of Väisänen at his finest while skillfully avoiding the inherent clichés of analog instrumentation.


Perhaps the greatest testament to the relentless creativity exhibited on Asuma is the clarity of voice with which Väisänen composes each track. Although Väisänen may employ the same raw materials as his full-time work in Pan sonic, one is never left with the sinking feeling that Asuma sounds like a Pan sonic record with Mika Vainio’s tracks conspicuously missing. Instead, Väisänen has crafted a remarkably coherent, well-crafted album that defies the typical “sketchbook for his other band’ criticism that all too often plagues solo albums and created an album that fits comfortably in the canon of both Mego’s militant digicrunch aesthetic and Pan sonic’s “new analog” crusades. As such, Asuma stands as convincing argument for the softening of Mego’s laptop-only dogma and as a strong, consistent release to be enjoyed by Pan sonic devotees – even if the occasional “too-analog” burp slips out.