Franck Vigroux & Mika Vainio - Ignis (2018)

A stunning set of previously unheard posthumous recordings from Mika Vainio aided and abetted by Franck Vigroux. Haunting, cinematic, extreme electronic panoramas of the highest order…

Mika Vainio and Franck Vigroux’s brutal yet filigree electronics come to light in ‘Ignis’, which finally discloses the further, etheric results of recording sessions that made up their ‘Peau Froide, Léger Soleil’ album in 2014, their celebrated previous collaboration for Cosmo Rhythmatic.

Posthumously issued following Mika’s untimely death in 2017, Ignis taps into the pair’s mutual respect for unsound and proprioceptive allusion, operating at liminal levels of tonal and spatial perception in a six track LP that leaves the project with a sense of unresolved tension.

Since Pan Sonic ceased operations in 2009, Mika found one of his sharpest foils in French multi-instrumentalist Franck Vigroux. They embarked on a lengthy creative process, articulated through studio and live performances, resulting in the powerful Peau Froide, Léger Soleil album and further recordings planned for a 2nd release. The end results of these efforts are collected on Ignis, a set of six parts paying tribute to a mutual fascination with what lies at and beyond the threshold of sonic comprehension. Where their previous effort traded in a mix of colossal, pendulous industrial funk and abyss-baiting doom, this one fully embraces the void in all its glorious mystery.

From a trail of icy bleeps, Brume lures us into cathedral-like ice cave dimensions with breathtaking cinematic effect, before the antechamber of Ne te retourne pas highlights those supposed dimensions with streaks of phosphorescing light to much more paranoid, imposing degrees, before calving off into the mechanical jaws of Luxure.

Deep in the beast’s mouth, Vigroux bleats a forlorn vocoder message on Un peu après le soleil, and their Luceat lux gives rise to their most extreme, dynamic frequency massages, for Feux to wrap up the trip in a barbed wire bouquet of ravishing distortion.