Sahko Finland レコード& CD

Review: Mika Vainio's "Olento" is one of the key albums from his fine discography and now, finally, it is available on vinyl for the first time. The sophomore album first landed in 1996 and laid down a new blueprint for minimal techno that has rarely been bettered since. The album is also a fine summation of the Finnish artist's sublime and singular style - icy ambient tundra that are vast in scale but minute in detail, warped synth oscillations that sound at once futuristic but also somehow like field recordings from a lonely part of the arctic circle, and brain melting sine waves that lock you in a trance. Essential.

Review: Wow. When you're writing about music releases it's often tempting to present difficult to describe tunes as unique. That's not always factually accurate, though, as is clear when you come across something like this seven-way bag of the wonderfully bizarre. Half the stuff on here, at least, really does defy categorisation, although we can probably lump it all together as experimental, industrial-leaning electronic music with avant-garde tendencies. And a libido. What that describes varies wildly. Nuke Watch's 'NWPJS Perc' interprets the term as a kind of slow build, low BPM workout made up of what could well be the noise of various tools, pipes and taps being struck. Umfang delivers a dark and menacing hip hop-electro instrumental, packed with atmosphere and pent up energy. Ana Fosca goes for shrill refrains and drones. Egg Meat serves a dominatrix of off-time weirdo-techno tones with mind melting percussive cacophonies.