Earth Variations

A year inside new geographies

Happy new year!

As we transition into a new year and, hopefully, toward a more Earth-based world (colourful, dynamic, intelligent, creative, cooperative, egalitarian, disharmoniously peaceful), instead of some escapist ideological fantasy cloud bubble (wars, ecocide, climate breakdown, genocide, inequality, greed, capitalism, racism, post-truth), a couple of brief reflections related to my practice: 2024 has been the busiest and most productive year of my life to date.

A year of new cartographies, geographies, stories, possibilities, if you will.

This year saw the release of two albums of mine, Bloom and Earth Variations. While Bloom emerged from the desire to hear a certain kind of “sensuous, tender, fragile electronica” that I felt was missing from the contemporary releases I kept coming across, it obviously represented a kind of beat-based electronic music I’d already left behind; Earth Variations, on the other hand, is something I’m very excited about and proud of: the result of a very long and arduous multi-year process, its every listen still keeps taking me to these novel landscapes, terrains, territories, geographies, stories, possibilities! To me, it’s such a unique global record (pity that the music media ignored it completely).

Fresh from finishing Earth Variations, I embarked on the most laborious yet most fulfilling and thrilling project to date: PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA (‘small truths/facts’), a generative sound-poetry installation and composition, keeping me largely occupied for the rest of the year. Featuring nine contemporary poets from Jyväskylä FI, it was originally supposed to be “only” a site-specific installation at Taavettilan riihi, the oldest building in the Jyväskylä city area; yet it then found an afterlife as acousmatic performances at the Writers’ House and the City Library in Jyväskylä, eventually transforming into two contemporary dance performances at the Villa Rana cultural centre in the city, all thanks to the choreographer and dancer Saga Elgland as well as to the participating partners Keski-Suomen Tanssin Keskus ry, Keski-Suomen Kirjailijat ry and Kulttuuritalo Villa Rana.

Regarding all the work I’ve ever done, I’m most proud of this one. PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA presents a kind of musical future I’m yet to hear elsewhere and which I’d like to most explore from now on. Its combination of generative (self-organizing and -evolving) poetry, voices (spoken word) of the poets, and the music made of transformed environmental sounds, creates a very unique and immersive experience that exists between spoken word, opera, field recording (environment) and ambient music. “Meditative opera”, as some listeners commented. I want to make this a more multilingual and multicultural experience in the future.

Amid developing the infinitely playing PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA, I spent two months at the wonderful KulttuuriKauppila artist residency in Ii FI, creating a new 20-minute site-specific composition and performance titled SIINTO (‘shimmer’, ‘dawn’, ‘reflection’ or ‘glow’): it’s made mostly of the environmental sounds recorded around Ii, the voice of a dear friend born in Ii, and processed recordings of Ginette, originally performed by Petteri Mäkiniemi. It’s the most demanding piece I’ve ever had to prepare, with so many contrasting layers having to come together. After its successful performance as part of the Evenings of Art & Culture in Ii in August, I thought I could forget all about it: it has now become the basis of my next album Siinto, out next year!

My another long-term album Radiant City is also slowly falling into place, out next year.

The beautifully frozen Winter (-42 C) and sunny Spring at the refreshingly quiet and isolated Frosterus artist residency in Kärsämäki FI saw me applying for the docARTES doctoral studies in music and sound art at Leiden University NL and Orpheus Instituut, Ghent BE. And here I am, successfully lamenting about the drizzly and downcast Belgian winter! Where the f*ck is the sun?! (+-0) Once here, we were told that getting into the docARTES programme was the hardest part, now things should be getting clearer and sunnier.

Due to the programme, I had to cancel a very exciting artist residency in Amman and Wadi Rum, Jordan, this autumn, courtesy of Remal Lab/Studio 8 (Israel committing genocide and other war crimes in the neighbouring Palestine was also one troubling factor). I hope to attend the residency in the coming years when my study schedule allows and the current Israeli government is rotting in jail/hell.

Toward a new, hopefully more colourful, dynamic and civilised world!

Earth Variations – streaming everywhere

Pleased to announce that my new album Earth Variations is now available on all the major streaming services worldwide.

Links to the album on selected streaming platforms

I’m truly excited – and relieved – to finally have this album completely released and out in the world. It’s been years in the making, with unexpected detours and discoveries along the way.

I’m truly grateful to the brilliant artists and musicians who made this album possible: Viktoriia Vitrenko @viktoriiavitrenko on vocals and voice, Omar Harb @omarharbmusic on bass, Petteri Mäkiniemi @petterimakiniemi on Ginette, Nazim Bakour @nazimbakour on electric guitar, Em’kal Eyongakpa on field recordings. And to the brilliant Gregor Zemljic @gregor_zemljic_gz_mastering for mastering the album with such care.

Thank you also to the similarly brilliant Lee Clough @leeclough, whose original photograph (now obscured by my yellow haze) inspired both the visual and sonic direction of the album. And for her Indian riverscape tape recording that first set me off for unearthing these possible musical geographies (back in 2000!).

My gratitude and warmth also extend to everyone else whom I’ve had the pleasure to meet along this journey – there are simply too many of you to mention here 🙂 – as well as to the Finnish Cultural Foundation (SKR) and the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike) for their invaluable support. Thank you.

Keep rocking X
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“Earth Variations explores the idea of music as an embodied and possible geography: a milieu, landscape, terrain, situation, condition, atmosphere. It is inspired by our unique, complex planet in a state of flux. Featuring contributions from soprano Viktoriia Vitrenko, bassist Omar Harb, Ginette player Petteri Mäkiniemi, guitarist Nazim Bakour, and sound artist Em’kal Eyongakpa, the music has been composed and recorded in London, Saarbrücken, Espoo, Douala and Paris between 2004 and 2023.”

Earth Variations out now

My new album Earth Variations is out now. Finally, phew!

Earth Variations on Bandcamp

This Bandcamp release includes high quality download and additional artwork. The album will be available on all the other streaming services in early June (the exact release date to be confirmed).

Earth Variations is inspired by our unique, complex planet in a state of flux – a world that our escapist political and economic ideologies, against all the actual intelligence and knowledge, continue to regard as a resource to be exploited and exhausted rather than an opportunity to be nurtured and shared. (Or perhaps it’s no longer about ideologies and escapism but pure greed and indifference.)

Drawing from the notion of geophilosophy – “earth-thinking” originally conceived by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to consider the relation between thought and environment (concepts created through the relationship between territory and earth) – the album explores the idea of music as an embodied and possible geography: a milieu, landscape, terrain, situation, condition, atmosphere. In this sense, it follows the map initially drawn by artists such as Jon Hassell, Brian Eno, Bernard Parmegiani, Biosphere, Ben Frost and Björk (and many others, even those without the initial B) while adding its own, previously uncharted regions to it: musically it journeys in a less familiar territory between the habitats of contemporary classical, experimental electronic, world and possible musics – occasionally reaching a more elevated ground to gaze at these more familiar vistas on the horizon.

The album features contributions from soprano Viktoriia Vitrenko, bassist Omar Harb, Ginette player Petteri Mäkiniemi, guitarist Nazim Bakour, and sound artist Em’kal Eyongakpa. The music has been composed and recorded in various locations in London, Saarbrücken, Espoo, Douala and Paris between 2004 and 2023. The album has been mastered by Gregor Zemljic (Earresistible Mastering).

The cover art includes original photography by Lee Clough of the Wadi Rum desert, Jordan. Lee is the main culprit/catalyst in this story: it was her low quality cassette tape, which she’d recorded during a boat ride in the Ganges river near Varanasi in India and which she’d lent me back in London in early 2000, that first gave me the idea of music as a possible geography, landscape and place – or geography/landscape/place as a possible music. I became entranced by that tape and the world, possible and real, its sonic content and quality painted; I even failed my first year of Sonic Arts studies because I insisted on incorporating the tape into my compositions despite the clear instruction not to use any field recordings at that stage. I couldn’t resist: that early morning/late evening river atmosphere with people and cows passing, smoke from the riverbanks rising, gentle engines droning, birds and monkeys calling – everything punctuated by Lee’s joyful, sometimes perplexed, shrieks and comments – represented to me the very essence of life, of being alive in this world: no ideologies or escapism, simply being immersed in the landspace, embracing the world.

Fast-forward to 2015 and the European refugee crisis. Instigated by the geopolitical situation, Earth Variations started as an extensive sound art project about migration, conflicts and borders. However, since I was unable to secure funding for its realisation, the initial sketches gradually evolved into instrumental compositions of their own, still carrying those themes at their core but in more abstract forms.

Years later I would find myself overdubbing these compositions with bassist Omar Harb in a studio in the vibrantly multicoloured 10th arrondissement of Paris. Suddenly I felt struck: here I was with a guy who actually came from one of the origins of that crisis, who had experienced the war firsthand, personally witnessing the destruction and tragedy of everyone and everything close to him, eventually having to flee his home across terrains and territories toward a more possible future. Yet here he was in front of me, playing the most beautiful and life-affirming music that seemed to know no crises, conflicts, borders, ideologies, territories – let alone any art projects, curatorioral practices and their momentary trends. This was simply life: this was why music existed.

Later that summer of 2021, when we were recording vocals with Ukrainian soprano Viktoriia Vitrenko at the Cité des arts in Paris, the war in Ukraine was yet to happen. In fact, the idea of a new war in the world would have seemed like the most ridiculous prospect back then, since wars belonged to the juvenile and less enlightened world of the past – and we lived in a civilized world of now…

Hope you’ll enjoy discovering the music X

Phew and gratitude

Spring makes noise!

Pleased to announce that my new album Earth Variations will finally be out on May 15. The initial Bandcamp release, with additional artwork and higher quality download, will arrive on all the other streaming platforms in early June.

The release has been delayed by my doctoral programme application, which has taken most of my spring. Excited to announce that I’ve finally been accepted to the prestigious and advanced Orpheus Institute in Ghent, Belgium! Phew (and gratitude). For the next four years, I’ll be researching the future of music and developing a novel environmental AI application while enjoying some waffles and chocolate.

The mastering of the album has also taken longer than usual, since this one required “gardening, not architecture” (after Brian Eno): putting your gloves on and tending carefully the delicate textures and colours the album is made of. Yet I knew that my inimitable mastering engineer, Gregor Zemljic (at Earresistible Mastering), would be able to rise to the challenge, preserving the fragile, unique qualities of the original while enhancing them greatly. And he did!

Phew and gratitude.

These also extend to the Finnish Cultural Foundation (SKR) for their two-year artist grant, and to the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike) for their six-month artist grant, both which enable me to focus on my current stage of artistic research and production with the depth, immersion, time and care they require. Thank you, SKR and Taike. The future suddenly feels possible in its improbable brightness.

Keep redesigning the world. Stubbornly.

Marseille, France, 2021. One of the many places visited on the album.

A new album out in March 2024

Five years ago today. Finishing the dress rehearsal for our Musica nova 2019 concert at the Helsinki Music Centre: Jaani Helander on cello, Heikki Nikula on bass clarinet, me on afrorithmics, and – hiding behind the camera – Petteri Mäkiniemi on Ginette.

The idea for my forthcoming album Earth Variations (out in March!) was born in those rehearsals and recording sessions, when we were developing our commissioned piece and experimenting with instrumentation and possible musical geographies. The album also features, among others, Petteri Mäkiniemi on Ginette (an electronic instrument designed and built by him, based on the French ondes Martenot electronic instrument developed in 1928).

It’s been quite a journey since (via Paris!), and I feel I’m looking at this picture from a higher, different plane/plateau now. There’s always been a great joy and freedom in everything I do – at the expense of a faster and greater success, I suppose – but the more you do and search and find, the deeper and more genuine this joy and freedom seem to become. It’s all about enjoying and being attentive to the process more than aiming for some set goals. As David Bowie said:

“If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

I certainly felt like swimming when performing alongside these genuinely talented musicians.

Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, Paris, 7 April 2021.

Coincidentally, I also set out on my music-making adventure in 1993; in 2021, I was recording overdubs for Earth Variations in a studio in this very neighbourhood as pictured (Studio Bleu, 10th arrondissement).

My instagram scribble at the time:

“Cycling around Paris makes one feel alive, as if going around the world. The city was an instant crush back in 1995, and continues to be a discovery, with a lot of random access memories and novel outlands from the fragments of time. A multitude that’s human after all. #dafunk“

Our golden age now

Happy New Year! Let’s hope it’ll be peaceful and prosperous for us all, bringing many new joys and adventures along the way.

This year will see, among others, the release of my album Earth Variations – finally! (it’s hard to let go as I keep enjoying inhabiting its sensuous possible world, from improbable musics to possible musics, exploring its dynamic and immersive territories between music, environment, geography, soundscape and abstract art). The release has been delayed until March-April though: I’ve been unable to work on it properly during the holidays (a lack of quiet space), I cannot afford to finance its mastering at the moment (after ten albums, my personal well has run dry) – but also because of one beautiful, serendipitous discovery over the holidays.

I had asked a dear friend of mine to provide a spoken word part in her native Urdu (beautiful language!) for the remaining unfinished piece, and when we finally sat down at this luminous Belle Époque/1920s’ café to discuss the piece, she asked if I preferred the poem she’d chosen to be spoken or sung. I was confused: “can you sing?” I’d known this loveliest human being for two years, and it was only now that she told me she’s also a trained singer in Indian and Pakistani classical music! (I’d been looking for such a singer for a while now, but without funding it’s difficult to find the collaborators you need). To me, she’d always been just one of the most brilliant anthropologists, architects and visual artists out there – yet here she was, beginning to sing these romantic classical Pakistani songs softly into my ear in the most enchanting voice over our candlelit coffee table. If there’s a celestial version of us all, it’s certainly through singing. Above us, the old Parisian street lamps, a crescent Moon and five planets of the solar system shone brightly; at one end of the street, the grand Opéra house appeared majestic and dreamy in its evening lighting, at the other, the Louvre Museum continued to glow gently. This was probably Midnight in Paris, and I was accompanying Paul Gauguin, Claude Debussy and others in their quest for faraway places: yet it was just Saadia and me at a crowded Belle Époque/1920s’ café, envisioning our future performances and recordings in Paris together. The faraway had been explored (and exploited, unfortunately), now it was all about the complex, multicultural hybrid future ahead of us to discover and cultivate – and it is bright as far as culture is concerned.

We’ll be recording vocals on few more tracks to see how her voice might work on this album. There’s a sense of a journey toward home, a circle closing: the biggest musical influence on the album has been the late American trumpeter and composer Jon Hassell, who in turn studied Indian classical singing with Pandit Pran Nath, transforming that singing technique into his trumpet playing and thus discovering his unique sound, combined with electronics and novel rhythms…

Have a great start of the year X

PS. A couple of official photos of the performances at the 2022 Prince Claus Impact Awards Ceremony in Amsterdam last month (received them recently). Photography: Frank van Beek.

‘Undiscovered Planet’ – music for immersion

As we quieten for the holidays, here’s an outtake from the upcoming album Earth Variations.

‘Undiscovered Planet’ was originally a site-specific composition made for Vapaan Taiteen Tila in Helsinki (Free Arts Space, a cavernous bomb shelter under the Katri Vala park, now used as an event space for the students in the University of The Arts) where it formed part of my sound and light installation A Garden, Faraway (for Katri Vala)* for the Sounding: Underground sound art exhibition in November 2017. In the installation, the music was diffused through large ventilation pipes into two cavernous, warmly and colourfully lit corridors, but because of its subtle and discreet character and the relative loudness of the other works on show, the piece went largely undiscovered by most visitors; I had composed and mixed the music in situ in late evenings after everyone had gone home, sitting alone in those beautiful, calming and quiet caverns and observing how the music emanated gently from the pipes and interacted with the space in ever-shifting, delicate ways. It had felt perfect, and those evenings became the most elevating and immersive sound-space experience in my career to date. It’s a shame then that no one else got to experience the installation in its intended, original condition.

This new version includes – quietly in the background – a conversation between Emeka Ogboh and me, recorded in Emeka’s kitchen in Lagos in March 2013 and with an orchestra of crickets, generators and neighbours pulsating in the warm night outside. It’s one of those Lagos-Helsinki things…

Have a peaceful and immersive holiday, everyone!

* Katri Vala (1901–1944) was a progressive Finnish poet, critic, school teacher, and during the 1920s a central member of the literary group Tulenkantajat (the Fire Bearers). Their main slogan “windows open to Europe” resonated strongly with me and my friends growing up as kids in a small village in Finland, while Vala’s debut book Kaukainen puutarha (A Distant Garden) inspired me greatly as an adolescent to seek life beyond that offered by our cultural, economic and political realities at the time.

Upcoming musics (Spring 2023)

/// Updates ///

My next album Earth Variations will be out early next year 2023. As often happens, the album would be ready for release in late November/early December, but due to the holidays it wouldn’t be delivered to the streaming platforms until January-February at the earliest. So once again, I’ll take the opportunity of the quiet during the wintry rural days to go through the album one more time, ears refreshed.

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I’m currently working also on a new EP titled Radiant City, an offshoot of the new album Interspaces. It will feature the piece Radiant City from the album as well as four new compositions: Trade I, Trade II, Monday Morning in Lagos and Midnight in Fez.

As the title suggests, the EP is inspired by an idea of the city: a dynamic, hybrid, inclusive and thriving multiplicity – not the Corbusier’s vision of a linear and ordered metropolis of the future but one of an indeterminate and colourful incubator of our present (and near future).

The pieces, which incorporate city sounds into the music, have been partially created by using generative music algorithms, where an algorithmic system (designed by me) has improvised the music or soundscape from the sonic material and instructions I’ve provided, thus producing results which I as the composer might not have envisioned or chosen. The process and its outcomes are a bit like the life in a city: indeterminately unfolding yet always retaining a recognisable character.

The EP will be out next Spring.

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I’m also considering releasing a new version of my album Pulses / Radiance from 2017. I came across it recently after a long time, heard the tracks in a wrong order, and was surprised how sensuous, fresh and invigorating it sounded. It’s a shame that works like this, by a multitude of artists, have to disappear into the ocean of indifference (online music publishing) so quickly; “digital amnesia”, as architect Rem Koolhaas described our online culture…And where the art world tends to embrace and elevate visual diversity, the music world tends to eschew similar sonic diversity (for the obvious physiological, cultural and economic reasons). Nevertheless, the album probably suffered from a slightly naïve production at the time as it was a whole new direction for me, and now with experience – better mixing, editing, soundscaping and mastering – its idea might come through clearer and stronger: it might even float in that ocean for few seconds before sinking. 😊 The record was a precursor to both Earth Variations and Radiant City, so in that sense this revisit would be exciting and timely as well. Let’s see (I’m already hearing musicians from jazz, classical and intercultural ensembles playing on the revised version…dreams).

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Finally, I’m also preparing a collection of my previously unreleased ambient and piano pieces from 1998-2022.

Tentatively titled A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, the album includes 10 compositions which have always represented the most welcome quiet waters to me when the stream of music has become exhausting, yet they have never managed to find a suitable home on any of my previous releases. And while I have often contemplated releasing purely an ambient album, the timing, the feelings, the drugs*, the ideas have tended to be wrong.

Until now, when my feelings are becoming toward less is more: less music that sounds like more music; less sound, more space; less perfection, more beauty; less engine noise, more bird song; less industry standard professionalism, more life-affirming authenticity; less centre stages, more environments; and so forth.

The album, which features contributions from composers-pianists Midori Hirano and Sylvie Walder, will arrive early next Spring.

Warmth x

*coffee, tea and wine in my case (thought of clarifying this 🙂 )

Algerian desert music

Recording with this Algerian guitarist, Nazim Bakour, for the upcoming album Earth Variations. We are deep in the Algerian Desert, an evening is setting in over the endless variations of sand dunes and rock forests and an oasis town down below teeming with people, animals, vegetations and agricultural soft robots. From my vantage point high on our dune I can see the rooftops of Paris through a giant window that has mysteriously appeared floating against the burning sunset sky.

The previous day Nazim had invited me to a jam session at his Cité des arts studio in Paris. There were musicians from Algeria, Benin, Brazil, China, Finland, France, Ghana, Germany and some others (whom I didn’t manage to meet properly). While sitting in the middle of the room and listening to this intercultural, borderless new music serendipitously emerging – what the late trumpeter Jon Hassell might have dubbed Fourth world music, “a unified primitive/futuristic sound combining features of world ethnic styles with advanced electronic techniques” – I began to hear a beautiful yet subtle male voice singing quietly during the calmer passages in the music. The voice was exactly what I’d had in mind for Earth Variations for some years now, and naturally I presumed it was just me imagining and projecting this voice onto the music once again. But then it grew louder, took on new variations – until I eventually realised it was this tall and handsome Ghanaian man, sitting serenely lotus-like, eyes closed and his mouth barely moving, who was producing the voice. I felt elated: in that global space in the middle of the room, I had not only found the missing guitarist but also the missing singer for my album.

Earth Variations will be out later this Autumn or early next year (depending on the forthcoming recordings).

composer / sound artist / writer