MIKA VAINIO - Life (…It Eats You Up)

Pan Sonic are no more, but it's as if they still existed. Even though Mika Vainio was only one half of the duo, with this solo effort – his sixth – he brings the mother band's embers back to life, drawing energy from their harshest albums and following in their wake.

Let's leave aside the previous Vainio releases, mostly focused on an electro-acoustic avant-garde made of tolling sounds, glitch and minimalism, because on this new record the Finnish artist, picking up where "Gravitoni" left off, plays heavy.

The reference points at play could be many, but Vainio has the ability to synthesize them into a raw, essential mix of industrial electronics, devoted to the most hammering and vibrant techno. Imagined post-catastrophic scenarios chase one another, in a sort of enormous pre-Apocalypse rave. In this final dance, bodies smeared with grease used to lubricate the machinery dance in an endless trance state, while the music hammers on, in an infinite delirium.

"Open Up And Bleed" is an industrial mantra of unheard-of beauty and power, with the rhythm section front and center. "Crashed", despite its title, proceeds quietly against grey backdrops, while "And Give Us Our Daily Umiliation" is citationism cast in anything but biblical terms: harshness is on full display, unfolding in violent waves.

But it's the two-and-change minutes of "Throat", amid metallic tumult and icy noise, and the spectral initial spasms of "In Silence A Scream Takes A Hear" that truly unleash hell, stagnating and casting their pitch-black shadow over towering walls: a tumult that suddenly amplifies its impact. There's no letting up: "Mining" and "Conquering The Solitude" are two more immersions into a world of the future. "A Ravenous Edge" closes out this bleak journey amid tortured screams and exhausting blasts of metal.

Mika Vainio paints deep chasms. His are pictures of cities from a post-atomic future, where every human form has been replaced by automatons. A city untouched by the sun, and therefore devoid of any hope. The Matrix of the year 3000, a sprawling hallucination turned into music.

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09/08/2011