Joséphine Michel and Mika Vainio's The Heat Equation book will come out via Touch November 1st.
Prior to Vainio's death, he was in the process of planning another collaborative work with the Brussels-based photographer Michel, the follow-up to their 2015 book-album Halfway To White. In March 2017, Michel traveled to Oslo to show Vainio photographs she had taken for The Heat Equation. On that visit, a month before Vainio's passing, she snapped a photo of Vainio that appears in the new 100-page book (see the portrait to the right).
Vainio's recordings for the collaborative project were near completion when his sequencer broke down in spring 2017. This meant that the only record of his original work for the project was from a 2016 live performance recorded at Contra Pop festival on Ramsgate Beach, England. This board recording was also thought to be lost until a backup was unexpectedly discovered 18 months later. Mastered by Russell Haswell, the live set appears in full on a CD included on The Heat Equation, along with Michel's photos and an essay by Jeremy Millar.
The Heat Equation will be limited to 750 copies, the third in Touch's TOUCHFOLIO series of "ear books."
This past summer, Blast First Petite published a book on Vainio called Psychopomp For M.T.V. 15.05.63 Ð 12.04.2017.
Check out RA's tribute to the influential Finnish artist, Remembering Mika Vainio.
Tracklist
01. Mika Vainio - Live at Contra Pop, Ramsgate
Touch will release The Heat Equation
on November 1st, 2019.