Vainio's been at the forefront of new digital sound medias for so long now he's practically an elder statesmen in the field, sui generis to both aspiring sonic agitators and ardent enthusiasts of his work. As one half of Pan Sonic, he's responsible for some of the most provocative creations in post-techno electronic music, sidling between low-level machine ambience and scouring digitalia with calibrated ease. Recordings outside of his parent band have tendered many cochlea-ravaged extremities, arching from the very limits of hearing to full-on abrasive, often within the confines of a single piece; for Vainio, such dalliances are a demonstration of intent, for he's not one to mess about with Merzbowian dissonance just to itch his jones. When Vainio cruises about the cybernetic landscape of his machines, he always seems to have some sort of carefully considered destination in mind.

Translated as Black Telephone of Matter, this latest solo outing finds Vainio wrestling with all sorts of anarchy, matching it pound for pound with a strangely affecting compositional poise. It is as if the artist in residence is erecting what might one day be perceived as the classical music of the post-modern age, when music fabricated by solely synthetic means truly becomes the accepted norm. "Bury A Horse's Head" (dedicated to another erstwhile experimentalist, John Duncan), marries small, pensive ephemera and noises to a ballast of ear-deadening, gruff tones, yet Vainio's gift for pitch-shifting, for varying the levels at which each sound needs to operate, is spot-on, intelligent, and earnest in its realization of tonal hierarchies. Sounds don't cancel each other out as they do in the work of underground noise poseurs who simply want to cauterize your soul with aural pain; Vainio's compositions are impeccably well-wrought, finely organized. "In A Frosted Lake" conjures just such a vision, delicate (yes, delicate), crystalline sounds glittering like brilliant points of reflected arctic light.

But it is important to note that whether his resulting architectures are writ loud or soft doesn't mitigate Vainio's wholehearted love for abstraction: while his soundscapes remain readily active, the energies inside them alter too frequently and provide mere fractured glimpses of color, as if the artist was content to show us just the edges of his productions rather than the entire surface. This is particularly cogent on "Swedenborgia", Vainio allowing his sounds to flash by like images fleetingly absorbed through the windows of a speeding train. Perhaps such exposure is the best way to get deep into the psyche of his constructs: approached head-on, the effect might be akin to getting hit by a blunt instrument. The art of subtlety, even when quantized through volume, is part and parcel with everything smitten by the Vainio touch.