// Date: 16. October 2012

// Venue: Berghain

// Time: 22:00

// Tickets: 18 € box office / 15 € + tax pre sale at koka36.de

KEVIN DRUMM / MIKA VAINIO / LUCIO CAPECE / AXEL DÖRNER

BEN VIDA

HELM

RABIH BEAINI (DJ)

This edition of Berghain’s Elektroakustischer Salon series is dedicated to the now Berlin-based label PAN, which can be described without exaggeration as one of the most exciting and conceptually compelling platforms for experimental music around today, particularly because the diversity of the label’s releases cannot be pinned down to a single thematic or ostensible aesthetic correlation. With works by artists such as Keith Fullerton Whitman, Florian Hecker, John Wiese, Evan Parker, Frieder Butzmann, or Ghédila Tazartes, PAN’s catalog highlights a fascinating wealth of works across genres, generations, and scenes. Analogue synthesizer explorations, noise, improvisation, and sound collages all have their place, as does the documentation of Eli Kiezler’s sound installations, or Heatsick’s psychedelic dance music minimalism.

Founded in 2008, PAN fully embraces the radically open aesthetic of today’s music and art. With utmost care given to production, and with the label’s selection of works inextricably tied to the personalities of label owners Bill Kouligas and Kathryn Politis, PAN delivers quality curatorial filters that, in a very enriching way, enable listeners to find meaningful points of entry to today’s unlimited sound universes in which one might otherwise only too easily get lost.

More a continuous curatorial project than a label, PAN’s Kouligas and Politis see their releases less as „records“ than audiovisual objects that achieve their full potential only through the combination of music and visually coherent artwork, as well as through the narrative created by the sequence of releases.

The PAN philosophy is reflected in the quartet of Kevin Drumm, Mika Vainio, Axel Doerner and Lucio Capece. Although these four exceptional musicians each follow their own specific musical path, each can intersect with another or others in multiple ways due to a common rigour and ascetic spirit taken in exploring the deep structures of music, of aural perception, and of the perception of time. Since holding a residence in 2008, the quartet got together several times in the studio and for a small number of concerts, a process which PAN has documented with the release of the superb album "Venexia" in July 2012.

For his spring 2012 release, esstends-esstends-esstends, the Brooklyn composer, musician, and sound artist Ben Vida uses a hybrid system of analog modular synthesizer and digital signal processing to create synthetic sound compositions of an intense psychoactive effect and of expanded spatiality. Using both the sound projection capabilities of speakers and the physiological properties of the ear, he calibrates frequencies in such a way that the different sound waves interact to generate new sounds in the inner ear of the listener – sounds that are only present in the body of the individual listener. Thus, the album is a collection of spatial compositions in which audio shifts between external and internal sources.

Helm, on his end, focuses on the imaginative power of sound, crafting dense, evocative, dark soundscapes from a rich palette of materials and methodologies such as Musique Concrète, noise, hallucinatory drones, and sound poetry.

Rabih Beaini aka Morphosis connects the evening’s three live performances with special DJ sets.

The Elektroakustsicher Salon at Berghain is the beginning of a longer-term collaboration between PAN and the CTM Festival, which sees artists Heatsick, Helm, Ben Vida, NHK'Koyxen, Bass Clef, and Bill Kouligas perform at the Unsound Festival in Krakow between October19th and 21st, 2012. CTM’s collaboration with PAN will also continue to bring exciting program elements into CTM.13.

› pan-act.com

› berghain.de