Mika Vainio - Mannerlaatta (2016)

Mika Vainio’s incredible Ambient/Brutalist soundtrack album for a film by Finnish film maker Mika Taanila.

The music for Mannerlaatta was written very early on in the film’s two and a half year development, and subsequently held a strong sway over the rhythm of the film's editing and visual narration. As Vainio tends to use a set-up of homebuilt kit (strictly no laptops) unchanged from his very earliest productions, each new release is effectively a subtle alteration/refinement of his brutalist but tactile process of creation. And, going by that timeline of events, we’d speculate that Mannerlaatta was conceived somewhere in the wake of his staggering Kilo LP and the amazing Konstellaatio side as Ø, which is roughly where its aesthetics also lie.

The hour-long score breaks down to 6 sections, each exploring the full frequency spectrum of his patented, greyscale tonal palette, largely swerving a fixed rhythmic meter to occupy a weightless, outta reach mid-ground that seduces us headlong into his chasmic designs and, we’d imagine, best suits the black and white film imagery.

Key to the recording’s appeal - as with the best Vainio gear - is that peripheral sense of spatial dynamic and his unpredictable manipulation of amplitude; whether dangling us over abyssal subbass dimensions, needling with icy prongs, or occasionally alleviating the tension with teasing pads which evaporate back into the æther as though they were never there, ultimately leaving us rapt and at his mercy for the duration.