
Label Description: Written and produced by Mika Vainio in Turku in 91-93
Mastered by Rashad Becker at D&M

Label Description:
label: Sähkö Recordings
Cat No: SAHKO-037
format: 2lp+cd in one package, download & stream
release date: 15.9.2025
Barcode: 5050580857285
Mika Vainio started making a new Ø album in 2014. He almost finalized the record before his too early passing in 2017. The album Sysivalo is the 9th out of 8 full scale albums, released under the Ø alias by Vainio. Ø was his longest running project from 1993 to 2017. Sysivalo was recorded during 2014-2017 and is 60 min long album with 20 tracks, produced by Vainio. He described the record as a distinct Ø album that was going to include several shorter tracks, etudes. The title, Sysivalo, is invented by Vainio by combining the Finnish words sysi (dark or sinister) and valo (light).
Like life itself, the album carries a quiet darkness – honest and full of hidden light. The many of the tracks are beatless subtle soundtracks of eclipsed emotions. Like an incapacitated creature waiting for something to happen.
The closing track Loputon (Endless) is maybe the most beautiful tracks Vainio has ever written, Vainio’s last word.
credits
released September 15, 2025
Written, produced and performaed by Mika Vainio (1963-2017)
in Berlin and Oslo in 2014-2017
Compiled post mortem by Rikke Lundgreen
and Tommi Grönlund according to Mika Vainio’s notes
Digital mastering by Denis Blackham
Vinyl mastering by Rashad Becker
Front photo and print by Mika Vainio
Sleeve by Tommi Grönlund

Label Description: Our favorite six-string shaman is waving that axe around again! Sir Richard Bishop wrenches forth fresh damnable truth and beauty from a musical kamikaze run through histories both known and unknown. Turning a gimlet eye to the American Primitive guitar style, Sir Rick applies his own bloodthirsty interpretive methods on a self-described “excursion into the dark woods,” to locate – and play along with – the Primitive’s moonshine-fed inner savage.

Label Description: One of the Best Times Ever
Was Sex on the Beach
And not the Drink – Nothing
Metaphorically, Wet Wild & Juicy
Sex on the Beach, Stars in our Eyes
The Glow of reckless Youth Riding
Waves of Pale Moonlight
I Saw the Stars that Night, But they
Were Outshone
Always there
But
Always Alone – A Blink
in Time, A Moment in Stride
Inside so Close
The Dance of Sighs,
The Pitter Patter pattie
Try it on for Size ~
It’s What passes for Clase
Classy
Both Here
And Far
And Wide ~

Label Description:
The Very Thing That We Need can be experienced as a temporary sonic journey, a drifting passage through layered soundscapes. Each track unfolds like a chapter in an inward-bound narrative, leaning into atmosphere over urgency, weaving layered rhythms and unconventional melodies.
The album opens with a soft glow: piano and guitar drifting together in a quiet nostalgia. From there, the grooves loop and simmer, steady but just out of reach, like something half-remembered. Moments of calm give way to darker turns, sliding gently into a dreamlike haze that moves between the familiar and the uncanny.
In According To One, piano and guitar drift together in quiet conversation, conjuring a sense of ease, like looking back on something you never quite left behind.
From there, sink deeper into the slow-burning pulse of Induce the Peasants. Its steady groove is hypnotic and unhurried, perfect for losing track of time and letting the present dissolve.
With Santi Asoke, the mood lightens. Breezy and effortless, it carries you somewhere warm and weightless, a place where nothing is expected, and everything just is.
Things shift with Of Money Use. Here, the familiar starts to slip away and you’re left in a vivid, uncertain dreamscape where imagination takes the lead.
Finally, Asoke Hierarchy pulls it all back together. It’s a subtle revival: steady and composed, like standing up again after a long, introspective drift.

Label Description:
This is a particularly slow performance. I’d gone into it somewhat sleep-deprived, though by the third and fourth pieces, I was getting energy back from the music, enough energy to leave more space and allow the rests to speak. Thank you to the audience for staying with me.
The hollowbody Univox vibrates quite a lot–there’s a lot of air in there. Consequently, there’s a lot of air in these timbres: French horn, muted trumpet, accordion, glass harmonica timbres. This one’s a step toward a collaboration with silence.
The titles this week are references to the visual art of Louise Blyton. Thank you for listening!
Maurice Rickard: Guitar, programming
Signal chain: Univox Coily in Bb F Bb F Bb C tuning > Reuss Effects Understate, Reuss Effects Repeater Fuzz, Balls Effects KWB > Vox Wah > Hungry Robot Wardenclyffe Deluxe > Moyo Volume > Max/MSP eight-delay patch with FFT pitch shift, tremolo, convolution reverb, AudioThing Reels.
Impulses: Inchindown Oil Tanks ( Matt Gray mattg.co.uk ), silent5 Biamp MR/140 (Flat), St. Paul’s Huddersfield (near), Fort Worden Cistern

Label Description:
It is made manifest only to those who travel through foul and fair, who pass beyond the summit of every holy ascent, who leave behind them every divine light, every voice, every word from heaven, and who plunge into the darkness where . . . there dwells what is beyond all things.
The instruments involved in the making of this one:
Trumpet
Clarinet
Telecaster
Morphagene
Microfreak
Landscape stereo field
Make Noise Wogglebug
Assorted percussion