Mika Vainio

Best known as one-half of acclaimed techno minimalists Pan Sonic, Mika Vainio also has an impressive résumé as a solo artist that stretches back to the early '90s and his association with influential Finnish imprint Sähkö. Recording primarily under the aliases Ø and Philus, and sometimes his birth name (depending on the project), Vainio's aesthetic mission has been consistently and rigorously defined by an investigation into the materiality of sound. Indeed, just about everything in his catalog evinces a fascination for the physical extremes of frequency range and dynamics, from raw, wrenching bass tones and piercing sine waves to attacking transients and desultory blasts of white noise. Aineen Musta Puhelin (Black Telephone of Matter), Vainio's fourth album for the Touch label under his name, is similar to past efforts in its ability to wrest dramatic atmospheres from the most errant of sonic gestures. What's different here, however, is Vainio's almost complete abandonment of a rhythm..