Browse by Artist: AIRAKSINEN, PEKKA

Artist:	AIRAKSINEN, PEKKA
Title:	Madam I'm Adam
Label:	LOVE RECORDS (FINLAND)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$27.00
Catalog #:	LXCD 642CD

Intense double CD from this avant-garde underground icon from Finland, who recorded solo and with groups like The Sperm (who released one legendary freak out LP, Shh! in 1970), Gandhi-Freud, Ajraxin, etc. Disc one is a historical compilation, featuring mostly the first CD issue of original tracks from 1968-2002. Disc 2 is all new previously unreleased remixes from: Nurse With Wound, Simon Wickham-Smith, Es, Mira Calix, Curd Duca, Anton Nikkila etc. If you were impressed by the Love Records compilation Arktinen Hysteria, this is the next step. "The music of Petta Airaksinen (b. 1945) has been far ahead of its time for most of his 40 year long career. His finest recordings from the 60's are more reminiscent of industrial music and noise (which would emerge ten years later) than of the music of his precursors and contemporaries. In the early 80's few people, if any, were mixing mechanic beats and free jazz like he did -- favourable conditions for this kind of music didn't really exist until the turn of the century. His latest genre-hopping work will also probably take a long time to become fully appreciated. This compilation is a fairly subjective selection of his works from each of these periods. The selection of remixes commissioned for the second disc of the compilation aims to find a contemporary context for his work and to expand connections, some of which already existed. For example Nurse With Wound namechecked Airaksinen on their famous list of influences that came with their debut LP Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella (1979), while Finland's Es played together with Airaksinen in his first live performance since 1987 at Avanto Helsinki Media Art Festival in 2001."

Artist:	AIRAKSINEN, PEKKA
Title:	One Point Music
Label:	UNKNOWN LABEL
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	OR 035LP

"Pekka Airaksinen started making music in the late 1960s with the group the Sperm, combining performance art with experimental music of the day. With influences such as John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, the Sperm combined free jazz and psychedelic pop to create a sound resembling early industrial music and noise. After the Sperm's breakup in the '70s, Pekka Airaksinen became a Buddhist and would stop releasing music for almost a decade. Airaksinen, who was regarded as a recluse, returned to the public eye in the mid-80s under his own name and with a brand new but equally futuristic vision. His album Buddhas of Golden Light is an incredible mixture of Sun Ra's cosmic free jazz and twisted rhythms programmed on a Roland 808 drum machine. At the end of the decade techno elevated the 808 to a fetish object and Airaksinen disappeared for another five years. In the '90s Airaksinen released a large number of CD's and CD-R's on his own Dharmakustannus label, on which the style of each track varied wildly - breaking every rule of the niche-group marketing concepts of the era. All his recordings, whether they are his unique interpretations of contemporary music, new age, ambient house or jazz, are characterized by a sense of improvisation and casual roughness that is rare in electronic music. The most avant-garde pieces of his recent output continue his earlier work with the imaginary 'anthropoid music' of the future. One Point Music is his shining moment. Originally pressed in an edition of 120, this reissue has been needed for a long time." Includes an insert with Ilpo Saunio.

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