Ø (Mika Vainio)
Konstellaatio
*2024 stock* "Finnish experimental veteran Mika Vainio has kept up a brisk output of new music as of late. In the second half of last year, he put out collaborative albums with Joachim Nordwall and Stephen O'Malley, and on the solo front came Kilo, an arresting set of fierce, heavy rhythms reminiscent of his work in Pan Sonic. Vainio's latest solo effort is Konstellaatio, an atmospheric and often-poignant journey from his legendary Ø project.
Konstellaatio is Ø's first proper full-length since 2…
Oleva (2LP)
Originally released back in 2008, now repressed! Mika Vainio (1963-2017) was best known as half of Finnish cutting edge experimental electronica duo Pan_sonic. Ø is Vainio’s original solo pseudonym dedicated to his native label Sähkö Recordigs since 1993. Where Pan_sonic uses pure, industrial and sometimes harsh sound elements, Ø reveals Mika Vainio’s deeper, passionate and sometimes even romantic side.
Kiteet
The second in a series of posthumous Mika Vainio releases on Säkhö, celebrating the work of a true, electronic music visionary. The tracks on Kiteet, released under Vainio’s Ø alias, were initially written for the 1997 Snow-Crash exhibition in Milan but never used. Five of the eight tracks found their way onto later albums, three have never been released anywhere. As you would expect from an artist with Vainio’s immense stature and pioneering legacy, Kiteet is a mesmerising listen, built from so…
Olento
‘Olento’, alongside ‘Metri’, are the key pillars of Mika Vainio’s unparalleled catalogue, which makes this first repress in long over a decade 100% essential if you don’t already know. A resoundingly influential blueprint for electronic minimalism since its original 1996 release, ‘Olento’ followed the more robust, 4:4 pulse of 1995’s ‘Metri’ with a sensitively expressive, if still icy, grasp of pure electrical current that has remained a definitive hallmark of Mika Vainio’s sound. Bookended by …
Arc 1
Finnish label Sähkö Recordings is launching a new archival series of unreleased work from its co-founder Mika Vainio. The late Vainio left behind plenty of unreleased material after his passing in 2017. Arc 1 represents the first in a series of releases that draw on Vainio’s archives. The material here was constructed for a 1994 radio project, entitled Ambient City, that Vainio performed as Ø. Both sides here begin with perturbed ambient synth-scapes - grumbling LFOs, digital noise, that sort of…