Richard Chartier - Central (for MVainio) (2018)

Richard Chartier (Pinkcourtesyphone) pays tribute to the late, great Mika Vainio in the best way he knows how; one piece stressing a closer listening of subtle timbral shifts, and a blistering noise storm quite unlike anything else in Chartier’s catalogue.

“I think about the work of Mika Vainio almost every day since his sudden and untimely passing on April 12, 2017.

His work as one half of Pan Sonic and his solo work under his own name and as Ø and Philus were and are incredibly influential to me. It was partly one of the reasons I began working with sound again in 1997 after stopping for almost 4 years, central to the evolution of my own listening.

His sounds and arrangements were always elusive, otherworldly, unreal, strange, unsettling, often abrasive, and at the same time expressed a sheer unrelenting beauty. They seem to represent a push and pull between states, warmth and cold, silence and fury, future and past, life and death.

I was fortunate enough to perform with and for him (in the audience) and despite his being a man of very select words, to share conversations with him. The prospect of a new release by Mika always thrilled me. I am still saddened to think that there will not be more of his work to be heard each year.

These two pieces pay homage to Mika and the subtle and unquiet gifts he gave all listeners.”