Mono Pause/Aavikko: El Cebo/Of Stomping Men

Seeland 525/ Electro Motive Records CPA-020
7 inch single
2002

A co-release with the Bay Area-based Electro Motive Records label features Oakland’s Mono Pause covering a tune by Finland’s Aavikko, and vice versa, on a very high-quality vinyl 7".

Mono Pause has existed since 1993, combining an ever-shifting blend of odd instrumentation and far-out compositions with a rather intense situationist streak. They’ve stopped sets to escape into strange worlds of interpretive body movement, mutated into a Christian right-wing "seminar and music" group, and craftily lip-synced entire sections of concerts, unbeknownst to audiences. Their debut LP, Peeping Through the Listen Hole, is available via Negativmailorderland at the Electro Motive Records site. This is the group Negativland member Peter Conheim co-founded years before joining the Concord culture jammers.

Aavikko hails from Siilinjarvi, Finland and has been blowing audiences’ minds across Europe and the former U.S.S.R. since 1996 (and now the United States, having concluded the "Finland-Oakland International Cooperation Tour 2002" with Mono Pause) with their insanely catchy, unquestionably danceable all-instrumental tunes. Two cheap Yamaha/Casio keyboard players and one of the most intense drummers on the planet (recently described in a San Francisco show review as a "flesh-covered drum-bot") make up this great trio, whose releases are very difficult to find in the U.S. This 7" is their very first U.S. release.

The two bands decided to cover each other’s songs for this release, and managed to totally deconstruct each other in the process. Mono Pause turns in a Middle Eastern-flavored re-arrangement of "El Cebo" (originally on Aavikko’s Derek! LP). Aavikko takes Of Stomping Men from Mono Pause’s debut LP and boils this extremely eccentric tune down to a previously hidden and mournful essence as a sweet ballad.

Visit Mono Pause’s website at www.monopause.net.
Visit Aavikko’s website at www.aavikko.net.