NINE SUGGESTIONS gathers collaborations over the past couple of years between sound installation artist John Duncan and the two members of Pan Sonic, Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen. Duncan's previous collaborators have included Elliott Sharp, Bernhard Günter and Carl Michael von Hausswolff, and the album is on his own label. As Pan Sonic's reputation would lead you to expect, there's enormous confidence here in the handling of material, whether we're talking about distorted screeching like the strangling of an entryphone system, or the tiny flickers of sound, a lunarscape of nocturnal insects, found towards the end of "Center: Pause". The scale is grand and the spaces large, but these beatless soundscapes are achieved without bombast. Where there is a pulse, it's obscured, or clattering like a galloping camel. The two openers are fiercely blazing electronic bonfires, faraway drones and gradually evolving states. The second track "Volume" erupts like a small tornado nosing around your room, and later implodes to a glowing drone on the horizon, a virtuoso moment. The latter two thirds of the album treads a more peaceful path. Time slows down, and at 74 minutes, the CD has plenty of it. There's a nice alternation of slowly shifting textures versus sharply edited transitions. Plenty of fun and drama here for those of not too nervous a disposition. Overall it's a well put together record, packaged within a beautiful photo of a plant similar to an English cow parsley. -- Clive Bell, The Wire