Welcome

Kalle Vainio (b.1986) is a composer, sound artist and lecturer who graduated from the Art University, Sibelius Academy with Master of music degree in 2012, where he currently teaches composition. Vainio is deeply interested in exploring sounds from various objects and instruments using field recordings, tape recorders and preparation of instruments. Using these techniques he's able to find sounds somewhere in between ordinary -  sounds that aren't usually associated with the original sound source. The abroad range of works have been compositions, performances, audiovisual concerts and multi-art works. The Subjects of Vainio’s works often deal with nature and different manifestations of experiencing time through minimalism and the study of timbres.

Vainio has released eight Project Vainiolla solo albums Fragile Tape Music (SoundGhost 2026), The Land Where It Always Rains (Vainiolla Sounds 2025), Undulate (Shimmering Moods Records 2024), Biosignatures (Rohs Records 2023), Waves of Inner Peace (Slow-tone Collages 2022), Nocturnal (2017), Metamorphosis (2016) and Animus (2015). Vainio has performed his music in many festivals and concert halls across the world. To name a few: Flow Festival Helsinki, Lux Helsinki, Classical:NEXT, Tallinn Music Week, Time of Music, Musica Nova etc.

He is also a very active film composer scoring twenty original scores for various film productions including award-winning documentary films and Alli Haapasalo's Tell Everyone (co-composed / Vilma Jää)

"Simplicity and minimalism are very intriguing starting points for me -  it's like zooming into something very simple and then finding something truly complex and yet again something very simple."

 

Art/Work::::

 

Immersive reel-to-reel installations: The Land Where It Always Rains (2024-2025)

The Land Where It Always Rains is an immersive multimedia installation by multidisciplinary artist Kalle Vainio that weaves together reel-to-reel tape machines, field recordings, and video projections into a meditative exploration of rain, memory, and continuous cycles.

Conceptually built from the physical and atmospheric phenomena of rain, the work utilizes reel-to-reel tape machines running field-recorded loops of varying lengths. Recorded on tape using vintage microphones, the material carries subtle mechanical noise, physical friction, and temporal instability. Operating through internal speakers, the machines form a distributed, multi-channel soundscape where the loops slowly drift in and out of phase. This phasing mechanism creates shifting densities and temporal overlaps—an ever-changing acoustic environment where no rainfall pattern ever repeats identically. Rather than simply representing rain, the installation reconstructs its presence through layered temporal systems, allowing sound and video projections (by Ville Hyvönen) to form an ongoing, immersive condition rather than a fixed composition.

Across its iterations—including presentations at Galleria Utopia (Sound Art Society Finland) in August 2024 and Flow Festival Helsinki in 2025—the work examines the intersection of mechanical repetition, natural process, and human recollection. The circular motion of the tape loops directly echoes both the natural water cycle and the rhythmic, conditional nature of memory.

This connection to recollection is framed through nyctinasty—the botanical gesture of petals folding inward at night or under the weight of rain to protect pollen and conserve energy. Considered through the lens of human experience, memory similarly folds inward against the storm or the flood of experience, protecting its fragile core in the shaded chambers of the mind. Just as shifting light and atmosphere coax blossoms open again, human recollection responds cyclically to sensory triggers. Within this environment—punctuated by symbolic shelters like an everyday umbrella—the installation invites sustained listening within an evolving landscape where exposure, concealment, and analog memory intertwine.

 

Project Vainiolla - Undulate (2024)

 

"Undulate is an album where everything is played and recorded live with a one take. Vainio is improvising over two reel to reel tape recorders and one cassette player. Tape machines are playing old demo recordings, improvisations or unfinished songs with their own internal speakers. This interaction is like a dance between old fragile memories that gives impulses of creating new ones. Undulate is a journey where you move through foggy dreams until you wake up and the sun is shining." Instruments: Upright piano Uher Report tape machines Sony TCM-5000 Cassette player."

https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/undulate

Project Vainiolla - Biosignatures (2023)

 

Project Vainiola is releasing its fifth full-length album Biosignatures. The album explores different organic sound fields which were inspired by studying the growth mechanisms of fungal and bacterial mycelia. Vainio has collaborated with research doctor Wim van Eck, whose 'Evolving Game Terrains' time-lapse videos provided the music with a specific growth platform. On the album you can hear various keyboard instruments such as: prepared piano, toy piano, felt piano, grand piano etc.

 

Project Vainiolla - Waves of Inner Peace (2022)

 

In the composition one can hear e.g. string orchestra, Buchla 200e and Serge modular synthesizer, prepared piano and five-string kantele. Every recorded sound has passed through an analog tape such as reel to reel, elcaset or cassette recorders.

Project Vainiolla - Memory Clouds (studio live video)

"Those drifting clouds. Fragile memories. They are shaping the very essence of who we are."

The Red List - Simulation I/VII  (live video)

Composition-installation for pipe organs, accordion, tape machines, live-electronics and light design. The piece researches the extinction of species, the Holocene extinction also referred as the sixth mass-extinction.

Katoava hetki / J.S.Bach - Prelude e-minor

Video art created for painting Katoava hetki (A Disappearing Moment) combined with J.S.Bach's prelude played by Susanne Kujala.

Can you hear the music?
"Everything's created from the water."

Murhan DNA, TV-series
Directed by Tommi Hakko, original score by Kalle Vainio

 

Sound design
Elevator music for (Kone company's) design elevator for Näsinneula, Tampere

You can find all my important works in the ARCHIVE page.