(from CWSY#6, August '01) / home / reviews index

Pan Pipes- 'Transmission Form'
Italian band whose name in a Burroughs novel means "contacts between humans and extraterrestrials". So as you might expect, the music has a space-rock flavour.

The term 'space-rock' is taken too literally in 'Child': a voice intones a countdown before "we have ignition" into a rambling tune full of prog-style guitar. 'Planet Gong' is a more likeable listen, following the same Krautrock beat as the Echoboy classic 'Kit & Holly', and sung by an Italian Bobby Gillespie! Its lightness is a foil to the heavy guitar squalls on 'Metropolis' and the doomy atmospherics of 'Yoshi': Cure-style spectral guitar, and slowly menacing percussion with sad cello.

This is quite a diverse album: 'Urban Fall' is slightly Chemical Brothers with its chunky beats, flute and sitar, and ''Taste Of Candy' is built around great funk-bass. It needs more going on around it than just the guitar feedback, perhaps to lead in to a bigger groove, but the contrast given by the next track is a good one: from the title you can tell 'The Whispering of the Wind' will be gentler. It's like the Verve imitating Belle & Sebastian. But these more melodic tracks are let down by the heavy rock of 'Kill Your Idol' and the whispery, Gothic-style vocals; the samples on 'Child' and 'Radio Flash' are also somewhat cheesy. They need to extend their ideas if they want to make something momentous - many songs have a strong beat but call out for more variation in other instruments. It'd be interesting to hear what could be a modern take on Can's extended groove-led Krautrock of the 70s. Like the pictures though, very metaphysical!

Download songs from http://stage.vitaminic.com/pan_pipes, or write Tabanelli Andrea via lume 1582, Bubano (Bo) 40020 Italy