Motorlab Vol.3

This isnt your everyday sound-clash. The third in the Motorlab series from Icelands Kitchen Motors label pits fake imaginary/non-imaginary film soundtrack composer Barry Adamson against Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen of the Finnish minimal techno duo Pan Sonic. Kitchen Motors asked the artists to travel to Reykjavik and write a piece of music for a choir. Once written, Adamson, Vainio, Vaisanen, and Halldor Vikingsson recorded the piece ("The Hymn of the 7th Illusion"), as performed by Hljomeyki and conducted by Hordhur Bragason. The spooked recording -- a haunted, wordless succession of boyish escalating "ahhs" and "ohhs" -- was taken by Vainio and Vaisanen into the NTVO studio, where they added a repetitive, suspenseful, reverberant succession of electronic throbs that appear, evaporate, and return throughout the pieces 12 minutes. A number of slight atmospheric touches add to the cinematic feel, which Adamson no doubt played a role in. Its hushed and unresolved tension at its best, and could be used in a film where paranoia is an overriding theme. Not quite as engrossing is its remix, "The Illusion of the 7th Hymn," done by experimentalists the Hafler Trio. Throughout its 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. The gent pictured on the cover is composer Magnus Blondal Johannsson. 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 Sonics collaboration. The resulting brain waves are displayed on one of the accompanying cards within the packaging. ~ Andy Kellman