He resumed the Ø alias for 2005's Kantamoinen and 2006's Aste (both on Sähkö), while 2006's Revitty appeared on Wavetrap under his given name.įollowing 2007's 'Ikuinen' single and 2008's Oleva full-length, both released as Ø on Sähkö, Pan Sonic disbanded in 2009, releasing two collaborations with Keiji Haino in 2009-2010 and final studio album Gravitoni (Blast First Petite) in 2010. Vainio's next solo album was 2003's Touch release Sokeiden Maassa Yksisilmäinen on Kuningas (In the Land of the Blind One-Eyed Is King) this was followed by collaborations with Fennesz and Christian Zanési (GRM Experience, Signature) and John Duncan and Ilpo Väisänen (Nine Suggestions, Allquestions). Wohltemperiert, the second collaboration between Ø and Noto, aka Carsten Nicolai, appeared on Raster-Noton in 2001, followed in 2002 by Invisible Architecture 2 (Audiosphere, in collaboration with Fennesz). He continued to record as Tekonivel (for Sähkö sublabel Puu) and as Kentolevi for Patrick Pulsinger's Cheap label titles issued under Vainio's own name include 1997's Onko (Touch), 1999's Ydin (Wavetrap), and the following year's 20 to 2000 (Raster-Noton) and Kajo (Touch). Demand for Vainio as a remixer grew, with revisions of tracks by Björk and Tactile both appearing in mid-1996.

The increasing popularity of Panasonic found Vainio giving less and less time to his Ø work, but he did manage to release some of his most accomplished solo material in 1996, on his second Sähkö full-length, Olento, which featured the most effective fusion of Panasonic's austere minimalism with less immediate, more challenging structures. Vainio's Ø releases stretch back to the early '90s (predating his association with Panasonic by a few years) his earliest work appeared on the Corporate label before landing with Finnish techno institution Sähkö in 1993, where he released most of his material, including three albums and a handful of EPs.

His work under his given name followed a similar path, although some of his later recordings and collaborations, particularly ones produced after Pan Sonic's 2009 breakup, flared up to the intensity level of the duo's harsher moments. Unlike Pan Sonic's harder, comparatively more dancefloor-oriented gear, however, Vainio's Ø work tended more toward the ambient and experimental, wedding sparse machine noises with shifting rhythms, stubbornly unmusical sonic textures, and assorted channel separation weirdness. Sometimes known as Ø, Mika Vainio was the co-founder of Finnish techno duo Pan Sonic (known as Panasonic until 1998), whose innovative brand of blistering rhythmic noise and uncompromising minimalism transformed them into one of the most popular exports from the Northern European techno underground.

Mika vainio onko rarlab