Ø is the alter ego of Mika Vainio, who is half of Pan Sonic, a Finnish group operating out of Berlin.Oleva is a forum for Vainio’s more melodic experiments; his side project is still challenging, but easier to approach, like a pit bull who’s already had his steak.

Oleva is an album of two sides, which originally appeared on vinyl as four. The first six tracks are Murcof-esque, laced with techno and industrial spikes; the last six sacrifice accessibility and dive off the dark ambient cliff. When the album is done, a return to the first track provides a near-seamless wraparound. This approach favors the vinyl listener, who may choose to put the diamond on one black slab and not the other; CD listeners are stuck with the whole thing.

“Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” a cover version of an early Pink Floyd track, provides some evidence of Vainio’s ambitions: he yearns to achieve posterity as a progressive innovator. (In underground circles, Pan Sonic is already regarded as such.) On this track, Ø’s bass is a bit too slippery, and his rhythms too repetitive, but his speaker-wandering bells raise the piece from the wreckage (repetition also features prominently in Murcof’s music, but Murcof’s caverns have a few more bats). This anorexic approach becomes a liability on tracks such as “S-Bahn” and “Frekvenssi,” which have icing on top but need more filling; and “Loihdittu,” which lacks both. More discouragingly, if one plays the beginning of “S-Bahn” and “Vastus” back-to-back, one will encounter the same drum pattern. Faring much better is “Unien Holvit,” which utilizes silence as an instrument and refuses to walk a straight line.

The second piece of plastic is simultaneously more interesting and less engaging; at first listen, surprises lurk around every corner, but in subsequent listens, these surprises seem increasingly mild. “U-Bahn” utilizes static drones and drops, but taps out at 2:18 with a sub-frequency whine. “Koituva” offers basement torture drips, menacing fire crackles, laser pings and dissonant keys, but never amounts to anything greater than Disney’s Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House. By the time the percussion returns on the eleventh track, our patience has worn thin – a shame, because the closing piece, “Muistetun palaava taajuus,” is the album’s strongest. This track gathers the album’s discarded yarn and knits a sweater. It’s all here: a woman’s whispered voice, ghost-like keys, backwards-masking, rising claustrophobia. The crunches of the track’s third minute give way to a quiet vinyl hiss, the sound of an empty room after a crime has been committed.

While I respect all that Vainio has achieved in the past, as both a solo artist and a duo, I feel that I must pronounce Oleva an underdeveloped album, one that will not improve the artist’s legacy. Perhaps it should have remained a vinyl-only release, beholden to a rabid fanbase, because it simply does not work as a piece of sustained artistry. Only the first and final tracks are worthy; listening to the entire album is like trying to finish a sandwich when only the bread is good.

-Richard Allen