Does it annoy you that people today find electronic voices ugly?” Björk asks Mikä Vainio, hanging out in his studio in the 1997 BBC TV documentary Modern Minimalists. “It’s a pity that many people just cannot in a way relate with them,” ponders the Finnish musician. “Some of them are ugly for me as well, but quite many are interesting and beautiful as well.”
Much of Vainio’s work, including his recordings with Pan Sonic and as Ø, explores the tension between beauty and ugliness. Across his life and career there are many tantalising appeals to the power of the binary. “Mika Vainio was the most dualistic person of all. On one hand he had an extreme sense of beauty, and on the other, demonic shadows and death”…