Soviet Subliminal Seduction
Live performance. Mikko Mansikkala Jensen.
Mikko Mansikkala Jensen has always gone to great pains to underline,
that the music he makes with his solo project Soviet Subliminal Seduction,
is rock.
The numbers in Soviet Subliminal Seduction are a part of the familiar
guitar-bass-and-drum-tradition, but are reproduced with artificial digital
sounds produced by virtual instruments, and sound quite simply wrong,
but nonetheless in just the right way. Through this insistence on the
use of compositional structures from one genre, thereafter realising
them with tools and approaches from a totally different one, Mikko
Mansikkala Jensen has created his own dislocated parallel style that is
neither one or the other, or for that matter an actual mixture.
It began as a showdown with electronic music’s polished clinical
expression and the wider understanding of computer music, and her
Soviet Subliminal Seduction could have lost itself in being a concept
for it’s own sake. But Mikko Mansikkala Jensen is a man who also in
purely musical terms brings forth a constant stream of remarkable
ideas. Not alone does the form challenge normal understanding of how
computer music should sound, but the entire compositional vision is
spectacular in itself.
Soviet Subliminal Seduction stands for an insistent and aggressive
rock, where abrupt breaks, surprising shifts and curling noisy melody
lines tangle with each other, accompanied by an extremely well controlled
rhythm section. The aim is to surprise, tease and, none the least, blow people away. Here we have ultra catchy guitar melodies,
ingenious rhythm staggering and spacey repetitious riffs, psychedelic
blurring and aggressive noise. Sources of inspiration are 90’s noiserock,
70’s kraut rock and 60’s psychedelic rock. Additionally a traditional
verse/chorus structure seems very far away.
Pol Mod Pol
Live performance. Mikko Mansikkala Jensen.
In his other soloproject Pol Mod Pol, Mikko Mansikkala Jensen insists– like some mad scientist – that he can create dance-music out of
harsh noise. He demonstrates this by dancing crazy synchronised steps
whilst playing his insanely cut-up noise-melodies live, like a genemutated
John Travolta. Proving that there is no difference between this
and the latest Top 10 hit. And that’s that!
Not without humour and a twinkle in the eye, Mikko Mansikkala
Jensen pokes and prods at the harsh noise genre – probably the most
extreme and inaccessible genre around |
