ILPO VÄISÄNEN

Ilpo Väisänen, born in Kuopio / Finland in 1963, studied visual arts and ceramics, graduated from Turku art academy in 1991 and in the early 90s took part in several solo and group exhibitions.
He formed the performance-art group ultra3 in 1991 and in 1993, together with Mika Vainio, the sound group sinO which turned into Pan Sonic (originally called Panasonic).

Pan Sonic was one of the most ground-breaking and innovating projects in contemporary electronic music. In a musical form in which sequencing and recording music using computers is standard, the group was known for recording everything live, straight to DAT (Digital Audio Tape) using home-made and modified synthesizers and effect units.
Pan Sonic performed in clubs, galleries and at festivals in Europe, America, Australia, and Asia, for instance Southbank/Queen Elizabeth Hall, The Barbican (London), Centre Pompidou, Fondation Cartier (Paris), Volksbühne, MaerzMusik festival (Berlin), Sónar festival (Barcelona); they did collaborations with Masami Akita (Merzbow), FM Einheit, Erkki Kurenniemi, Barry Adamson, Keiji Haino, Charlemagne Palestine, Sunn O))), among others; had numerous CDs/LPs, live releases, album collaborations, and remixes (e.g. for Ryuichi Sakamoto); composed music for Comme des Garçons fashion shows; gained the Ars Electronica award in 2005.
In December 2009 their split was announced, Ilpo and Mika continued with their own projects.

Ilpo Väisänen is trekking through new possibilities in sound, timbre and structure. Political, philosophical, cultural – human. Musically speaking, and from the viewpoint of the prevalent vocabularies, he mixes techno with the spirit of the most caustic rock, with dub, and the most enlightened side of what was to be known as industrial.
Ilpo Väisänen returned to solo albums through now canonical Editions Mego in 2015 with ‘Communist Dub’, ‘I-LP-O in Dub’ in 2017, and last year’s larger album, ‘ÄÄNET’, in honour of his late friend. Peppered with some field recordings from a Pan Sonic tour of the USA, this album makes for the most dignified, powerful and delicate elegy.

Together with Dirk Dresselhaus (Schneider TM) Ilpo Väisänen is playing some kind of free-form noise with a tendency to drone in a duo formed as ANGEL in 1998, renamed DIE ANGEL in 2017.

Ilpo Väisänen is equally working on his solo productions, often under his alias I-LP-O In Dub.

In order to generate his sounds and soundscapes Ilpo Väisänen rarely uses more than the simplest of devices: analog keyboards and other oscillators he’s fabricated himself. In an age of digital ubiquities, his economy of means and anachronistic aura almost constitutes a challenge, indeed a provocation.
One discovers this postulate within the solo releases that Väisänen has issued since 1995. His world permanently fluctuates between hot and cold; composed of creaks, whistles, strange noises and rhythmic improbabilities, it’s a world oftentimes futuristic, yet prehistoric.