Pan Sonic
Members: Mika Vainio, Ilpo Väisänen
Ignis
Edition of 500 copies. A stunning set of previously unheard posthumous recordings from Mika Vainio aided and abetted by Franck Vigroux. Haunting, cinematic, extreme electronic panoramas of the highest order… Mika Vainio and Franck Vigroux’s brutal yet filigree electronics come to light in ‘Ignis’, which finally discloses the further, etheric results of recording sessions that made up their ‘Peau Froide, Léger Soleil’ album in 2014, their celebrated previous collaboration for Cosmo Rhythmatic.Pos…
Kantamoinen
Kantamoinen is perhaps the most intimately beautiful yet little known LP in MIka Vainio's Ø canon, bridging the gap between his classic ‘90s minimal techno productions - compiled in the vital Metri and Olento collections - and the project’s subsequent turn to more ambient, kosmic and dub wise dimensions in the coolly brilliant Oleva and Konstellaatio albums.
Upon original release it was an immediate favourite of ours - a go-to disc for hazy daydreaming and post-club head salvage alike, dr…
Live 2002
**Ltd. numbered edition of 800 copies, white vinyl** Carsten Nicolai’s Noton present a masterclass in minimalist electronic discipline with Mika Vainio, Ryoji Ikeda + Alva Noto’s powerfully future-proofed Live 2002 performance, recorded at Newcastle’s Baltic arts centre This recording marks the only ever concert by the trio and its release serves as a tribute to the much-loved Vainio. “Mika was not only a friend and collaborator, but also an inspiration for my work as an artist. This is a cel…
Entropien I
Pan Sonic's Ilpo Väisänen, Dirk Dresselhaus (Schneider TM) and Oren Ambarchi break down to the soul of noise with a new album dedicated to Mika Vainio. If you’re into Vainio, KTL or Ilpo’s brilliant solo work under his own name or as Liima / Piiri, this one's a doozy. Collectively, die Angel model a complex physicality through raw, elemental inputs, exploring a flux of reactive feedback processes and mutating, unstructured sonic states generated from crackling fusions of electronics, drums, elec…
Reat
Restocked. The first release in 8 years brings Mika Vainio in full action. Tracks with beats, groovy, experimental and/or hardcore all on one album, initiating the continuation of the label's activities with a series of releases. The logo on the cover can be read "reat" and means both a bad behaving child and something really evil. It is also a logo of a big company, whose name will not be mentioned, since Emd is not an advertising agency, to be highlighted here for the newcomers. Mika V…
Mannerlaatta
Mannerlaatta (Tectonic Plate) is Mika Vainio’s soundtrack for a “74 minute lettrist film made entirely without a camera” by Finnish film maker Mika Taanila; his 3rd following their previous collaborations, A Physical Ring (2002) and Return of the Atom (2015). The music was written very early on in the film’s two and a half year development, and subsequently held a strong sway over the rhythm of the film’s editing and visual narration - which takes place as a series of black and white images made…
Composed Nature / Yokomono Pro
** In collaboration with LOLA Landscape Architects, issued by this Alga Marghen-related imprint in an edition of 250 copies. ** "Produced by Staalplaat Soundsystem in order to document their recent sonic activities and researches, this LP record is focused on two projects. Composed Nature by Staalplaat Soundsystem and LOLA landscape architects, is an installation developed for the Centrum voor Beeldende Kunst Dordrecht, consisting of a matrix of 64 trees. Controllable mechanical vibrators are m…
Peau Froide, Leger Soleil
Double LP version. Peau froide, léger soleil is the result of a three-year recording process initiated by Mika Vainio and Franck Vigroux after a series of shared live experiences, beginning with a show in Paris in 2012. Their collaboration is an exercise in sensitive intensity, drifting through the whole space between minimalist meditations and maximalist kinetics. Vainio's signature brutalist production resonates throughout the album, constructing a psychic scenario for Vigroux's researches in …
Halfway to White
With Folio, Touch introduces a new series of bespoke hardback book and CD publications, produced to the highest specifications. This first release, Halfway to White, is a collaboration between singular photographer Joséphine Michel and acclaimed musician and sound artist Mika Vainio. Joséphine Michel's images reframe our perception of the visual by exploring the notion of "sonic photography," as she exposes her subjects according to the resonance of the noise-fields felt at her chosen loca…
Hephaestus
Arne Deforce is renowned for his passionate and unparalleled performances of contemporary and experimental music. As a soloist, his repertoire consists mainly of solo and chamber music with a special interest in works deemed "unplayable" but "performable" from composers such as Iannis Xenakis, Richard Barrett, John Cage and Brian Ferneyhough. Mika Vainio was one-half of the minimal electronic duo Pan Sonic. His solo works, under his own name and under aliases like Ø, are known for their…
Kilo
Finnish experimental electronic musician Mika Vainio's first solo album for Blast First sees him return to his classic power electronics/heavy beats approach that made Pan Sonic garner a worldwide reputation. The album developed from Vainio's recent live sets to make 10 tersely-titled tracks inspired by the shipping container industry. Four stars in Mojo: "heavy-freight," The Quietus describes it as "fearsome."
Rasputin 3000
This one-time limited edition of 750 copies comes from Austria's Comfortzone label and catches Mika Vainio in swaggering backroom dancefloor mode again for a 2nd, Jukebox-styled 7". A-side is a corrosive, killer slice of Industro-Bashment called 'Rasputin 3000', all skeletal rhythmic swagger and elemental distortion. B-side features an even more stripped down and haunted number called 'Devil Arrives To Finspång'. Nobody does this thing quite like Vainio - miss out at your peril!
Fe3O4 - Magnetite
Vainio is back with his fifth album for the esteemed Touch label! Currently based in Berlin, was one half of the minimal electronic duo Pan Sonic from Finland, (with Ilpo Väisänen). Before starting Pan Sonic in the beginning of the 90's, Mika Vainio has played electronics and drums as part of the early Finnish industrial and noise scene. His solo works, under his own name and under aliases like Ø, are known for their analogue warmth and electronic harshness. Be it abstract drone works or m…
Venexia
**Vainio and Drumm on one record? Oh f*ck yes - an Immense album mastered & cut by Rashad at D&M to 140g vinyl. Housed in pro-printed inner sleeve and jacket, itself contained in a silkscreened pvc sleeve with artwork by Kathryn Politis & Bill Kouligas.** PAN continue to take action against unoriginal, conformist sound with the release of an incredible, inspired ensemble piece recorded in Venice on May 12th, 2008 by four like-minded and exceptionally talented musicians. Make no mistake; i…
Life (...It eats you up)
Whereas previous works by Mika Vainio have utilised guitar Life (… It Eats You Up) is the first to use the instrument as its primary sound source. A fascinating, sometimes disturbing and deeply personal work this new 10 track set bears all the hallmarks (exacting attention to detail of tone, rhythm and texture) of Vainio's previous works with some stunning surprises, such as his cover version of The Stooges' 'Open Up and Bleed'.Tracks such as ‘Mining’ hark bark to the banging beat exces…
Hate People Like Us
Remixes of PLU music by Coil, Negativland, Farmers Manual, Bruce Gilbert, Boyd Rice, Dummy run, Rehberg & Bauer, Stock Hausen & Walkman, Death in June, Christoph Heemann, Sons of Silence, Barbed and Mika Vainio. "Radio shows and kitsch 60's Easy Listening, found sounds, overheard conversations, all subjected to a malicious clown's fiendish tinkering and manipulation of texture and tempo... Wild but wonderful." -- Paul Stump in The Wire.
Time Examined
Indispensible 94-page Hardcover book and 2XCD limited edition focusing on Mika Vainio's intense and truly jawdropping work for installations and site-specific works - making for one of his most priceless collections of material complete with beautiful images and essays - do not miss! Raster Noton is never short of opulent hi-end concepts for sound and design, but they've truly excelled themselves with this book + 2xCD (one disc of unreleased material and a reissue of the amazing Ø + Alva…
Nine suggestions
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 st…
Split
Despite the fact I've always had a liking for Pan Sonic I recently found out that Mika Vainio isn't actually the one with the fringe. Oh well, that's faceless leccyblokes for you. The one without the fringe is on spectacularly uncompromising form here, beginning with a nasty bit of high-frequency blasting before crashing into a heavy, ultra distorted 'tone' that could almost pass for Sunn 0))) being processed to within an inch of their lives. A temporary respite eventually arrives in the …
3. telepathics
Important Records have four releases involving Kouhei Matsunaga: an NHK record (apparently coming soon), a solo CD, a split LP with Mika Vainio and this here disc which has him collaborating with both Vainio and Autechre's Sean Booth. This is certainly a strange listen... The first track is Mika and Kouhei and needs the volume cranked right up. It builds from tiny scraping and string-like sounds into briefly menacing drones and back down again into crackle, hiss, dog frequencies and some really …