Pita - Get Off

Pita
Get Off [Hapna, 2004]



music is sometimes as good as food...

I finally got the new Pita CD Get Off from the Swedish label Hapna. Well, not directly from them of course. Always a tough sell, especially to those friends of yours who think laptop music to be Reaktor techno beats. Peter Rehberg once again provides an argument against people who don't consider software manipulation to represent what has traditionally been called "instruments". As I see it, any technological implement that gets used to create sound is an instrument. Some people who are otherwise open minded about music get a little too caught up in the "looks like he's checking his email" visuals provided by laptop performance to get into avantgarde electronic music, and so be it.

Damn them; they will increasingly understand as the decades pass and they get increasingly distant from the technological zeitgeist. It seems to me that the potential of software synthesis and wave manipulation outweighs any sense of "stage" presence which is denied by a musician sitting in front of a computer. Besides, the Japanese were on to something when they started manufacturing digital pop stars to complement studio-made pop music. Maybe Pita could project that fucking awful dancer provided by Micro$oft in Media Centre Edition. Best. Seller.

Whatever, so you don't have to like it. Regardless, music should sometimes be regarded as seperate from performance. I mean, there's plenty that can be accomplished in a studio or computer setting that does not replicate in a live setting.

Gee Dad, wasn't that why records and CDs were invented?
Home listening is a different experience than watching a musician in a live setting. Deal with that fact and move on.

Can one person really make a whole symphony of noise?
Sure can, ask your mother's anorectologist.

So why do we need rock stars who pollute the earth with two transport trucks of gear and questionable sexual ethics?Listen: shutup.

Otherwise, the aesthetic treasures that artists like Pita provide will be lost to you. Get Off, like much of Pita's work, is intended for deep listening, with all of the consequent pretentions: long attention to minute detail, a good listening set-up, and thoughtful analysis and parodic self-reflection. "Ethernal" sits radiant, and one enters slowly into a mesmerizing reverie of sensual associations; music as escapism and a jouissance made decadent by its abiding nature.

Early in track two, Pita then blows all that garbage out your own ass with a glorious burst of hybrid noisebloom. Calm is restored by "More Break After the Terror": the sound of what I like to refer to as sheet-metal ambient. "Babel" brings a quick scan of what seem to be popular broadcasts, gloriously edited to infinitesimal precision. Pita ends with what can be seen as a morning alarm, an oscillating bell tone reflecting a Phil Niblock transfiguration-through-stasis.

I'm still mixed on this one, although that might have everything to do with my adoration of Pita's previous two albums in the series. While certainly not as strong as Get Down, Pita's new full-length doesn't dissapoint so much as become expected.

MP3: Pita - Like Watching Shit on a Shelf