Ilpo Jauhiainen

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!

PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA by Saga Elgland Company

Thank you to choreographer and dancer Saga Elgland (of Saga Elgland Company) for her brilliant performance of my sound-poetry composition PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA at Villa Rana, Jyväskylä FI, last night!

More info on the composition and its origins here.

Her “reactive dance house game” to my “meditative opera” appears to have been an inventive, immersive, captivating and elevating experience for the audience full of praise afterwards (based on the feedback I’ve received).

Watching the several clips I’ve so far received, it’s fascinating to observe whether the poetic and sonic content follows the performance or the other way around; and how the movements, gestures, acts and objects keep constantly acquiring and shifting between different meanings and interpretations, depending on the words and sounds emerging. The entire stage seems to exist in a state of constant becomings: endless virtual possibilities becoming actual in plain sight, a multitude of stories seamlessly flowing into one another and unfolding in parallel, suggesting unexpected realities.

Naturally, thank you to everyone who attended the performances – the audience becoming part of the stage design was an inspired choice! – as well as to the participating partners who made this collaboration possible: Keski-Suomen Tanssin Keskus ry, Keski-Suomen Kirjailijat ry and Kulttuuritalo Villa Rana.

The featured poets:

Olli-Pekka Tennilä
Suvi Valli
Kristian Blomberg
Riikka Simpura
Petri Turunen
Anniina Louhivuori
Niklas Salmi
Riitta Cankoçak
Vesa Lahti

My deepest gratitude X

*** Have a warm and wonderful holiday season ***

P.S. Here are three rough clips from one of the performances, recorded with a phone camera by one of the featured poets, Vesa Lahti.

Choreography and dance: Saga Elgland

Music and sound: Ilpo Jauhiainen

Light and stage design, technical realisation: Lasse Saari, Timo Hanhisalo, Toivo Niemi

Production: Keski-Suomen Tanssin Keskus ry in collaboration with Keski-Suomen Kirjailijat ry and Kulttuuritalo Villa Rana

Dancing about meditative opera: PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA at Villa Rana

My generative sound-poetry composition PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA (2024) will be premiered as a contemporary dance piece at Villa Rana, Jyväskylä, next Friday 20 December, with two 60-minute performances (at 18h and 20h).

This “meditative opera” will be transformed into an embodied experience of movement and play by choreographer and dancer Saga Elgland.

Due to the generative nature of the piece, each performance will be unique, different.

I’m truly excited – and full of gratitude – as I always love working with contemporary dance, yet it happens so rarely! (seeing my friend’s contemporary dance piece in 1998 was the reason I went to study sonic arts in the first place)

More info and tickets below:

FB event

Villa Rana website

Tickets

Here in Ghent, I’m currently finalising a new, immersive 3D version of the piece for the performance. Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend the première myself as I’ll have a doctoral seminar here that day, but I hope some of you may get to experience the piece and the wonderful work that Saga and her team has put into it!

Supported by Keski-Suomen Tanssin Keskus ry, Keski-Suomen Kirjailijat ry, Kulttuuritalo Villa Rana.

Warmth X

PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA – afterthoughts

Thank you to everyone who came to visit my poetry-sound installation PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA (“small truths/facts”) at Taavettilan riihi in Jyväskylä this weekend. It was a delight to see so many visitors attending (despite the glorious summer weather outside), some even spending hours inside immersed in the experience.

The feedback I received from the audience was overtly positive, at times even rapturous which was all heart-warming (of course, people withhold any criticism they might have – I always wonder why is that?). People commended the way the voices, words and music kept emerging and unfolding in the space, creating an immersive, never-ending spatial and aural experience.

The adjective I kept hearing was that of ‘meditative’: this one author even called the installation as a kind of “meditative opera” (as in opera the narrative voice often forms the central musical element). From now on, I shall call my poetry installations as that: meditative operas.

Personally I’m very pleased with how the whole installation – poems, voices, music, their generative evolution and acoustic diffusion, architecture, environment, light etc. – turned out. Even though I’d already been listening to the piece for hours and hours while making it, I’d still find myself utterly immersed in it, captivated by how it kept producing novel combinations of its textual and sonic elements. Version 2.0 is already in the pipeline (upon request).

The space was lit by the natural light coming through the windows, and it only occurred to me during the exhibition that what an integral new layer that formed! As the piece kept unfolding within the space throughout the day, simultaneously the light kept softly changing, creating a generative experience of its own: at times it felt utterly magical.

Thank you to Keski-Suomen Kirjailijat ry and Villa Rana for making this possible. And thank you to Petri Turunen (from Keski-Suomen Kirjailijat ry) for initiating, curating and organising this project: your work was invaluable. And naturally, thank you to all the poets, whose words – spoken and written – kept inspiring me throughout the process (when my music continued failing): they made the piece the novelty and success it was.

My deepest gratitude.

Authors/poets Helmi Solimeïs, Riitta Cankoçak and Petri Turunen

PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA – a new poetry installation premiering this week

This week my new poetry/sound installation PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA will premiere as part of the opening weekend of the Art Street Jyväskylä’s autumn season (Jyväskylän Taidekatu), September 6-8. The installation will take place at Taavettilan riihi – the oldest building in the Jyväskylä city area and located within the Jyväskylä University Botanical Garden.

In the piece PIENIÄ TOSIASIOITA (“small truths/facts”), texts from nine Jyväskylä-based poets intersect, collide, become pollinated and stratified, break apart – and form new, accidental, momentary compositions. This is accompanied by discreet site-specific music created from the sounds recorded inside and outside the installation space (a “drying barn”). The voices and textual fragments of the poets as well as the musical motifs keep unfolding in a state of constant permutation, quietly self-organising and -changing – like a river that flows, an urban space in motion, or a forest following the seasons.

The featured poets:

Olli-Pekka Tennilä
Suvi Valli
Kristian Blomberg
Riikka Simpura
Petri Turunen
Anniina Louhivuori
Niklas Salmi
Riitta Cankoçak
Vesa Lahti

Welcome!

Working on the installation at the KulttuuriKauppila artist residency in Ii, Finland, July-August 2024.

Wonderland

An end of the year update.

Time flies, as do the ideas and potential creative directions enabled by the space and quiet of the writing residency. It’s been one of the most inspiring and productive periods ever, which will still continue for the coming spring until my next endeavours.

Early next year I’ll finally be able to start mastering the Earth Variations album, followed later by the Radiant City EP. They’ll be released in the spring and summer, respectively. Excited – and relieved!

Next year will also see the start of my major sonic art project that brings together science and art, thanks to the artist grant from the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike). More about this in due course.

I’m also planning a collaboration with this Iranian santur master here in Jyväskylä in the spring. Having experienced a couple of his very moving live performances, we’ve been having inspiring conversations since, mixing music talk with those of world politics and philosophy: always a good sign. Instead of simply improvising (which I’d then have to painstakingly edit into coherent takes), he actually prefers to compose his parts beforehand – I’ve been hoping for this kind of dedication for most of my musical life! Ours will be a special EP, blending the sound of his 3000-year-old percussion-stringed instrument with my yet-to-be-finished Afromontane Sound Painter. Ancient meets futuristic.

I’m currently busy applying for a doctoral programme in this prestigious music academy in Europe. Out of over a hundred applicants, I’m pleased to say that I’m among the final four to be considered for this particular position. This is a huge honour in itself as the position would allow me to focus on an artistic research into the future of music as well as the role of composers/musicians in the future society. Fingers crossed.

My planned book (on the future society through sonic arts) has been trundling and instead diverging into a series of essays. In our monthly essay workshop here with local writers – all of them established and many with literary awards (contrast this with me) – I’ve been receiving the most unexpected feedback: so enthusiastic, constructive and critically supportive! These authors have enabled me to see my writing in a wider literary and cultural context and believe in the importance of what I’m trying to say as well as the literary style I’ve been developing. So: something new will be published in the future days.

Spotify sucks. Please, reconsider using the service if you care about music, the artists that create the music and a healthy economy that underpins any equal, productive and functioning society. Thank you. (in academic terms: SPOTIFY SUCKS. THEY ARE THIEVES AND CRIMINALS.)

Lately I’ve been making new music for various poetry readings here in Jyväskylä. This has been the most refreshing as the music is a reaction to the local culture and environment as well as the poetry in question, enabling one to approach the idea of music from often surprising perspectives. Waking up early in the wintry mornings when it’s still dark and quiet, working on a new composition while watching the light gradually dawn and reveal a landscape covered in snow and frost – an in-between state conspired by the poetry, the landscape and the emerging music where anything feels possible. It is a literal dawn of the world, a (winter) wonderland.

Have a warm and peaceful transition into the new year

Live at Vakiopaine

This Saturday I’ll be performing two live-sets at this legendary venue Vakiopaine and their similarly legendary poetry club SÄHKÖ in Jyväskylä. Come, if you find yourself in this Nordic City of Light!

This first club night of the autumn features poets Sanna Karlström, Hanna Syrjämäki and J.K. Ihalainen.

I’m excited and honored to perform together with Sanna Karlström. The multi-award-winning poet and author will be reading from her newest poetry collection Pehmeät kudokset (Otava 2022), for which I’ve created a completely new, site-specific composition that will be generated live (I refer to the musical style as “Terrestrial” – after Bruno Latour )

My solo set will include a similarly new composition, inspired by the urban condition of Jyväskylä. Expect afrorithmic cityscapes and futurhythmic environments: Terrestrial Afrorithm!

The entry is free. Welcome!

SEPTEMBER 2

Field recording. Creating sounds.

Discovering and amplifying sounds that are too fragile, ephemeral and indeterminate for the music-entertainment-industrial-complex.

There’s something a lot more gratifying in selecting and designing sounds in this way than sitting in front of a screen and clicking through thousands and thousands of the most dazzling, amazing, impressive ready-made sounds that the industry offers these days.

Music-making, here in the forest, becomes an adventure of discovery again, drawing/composing from life.

(The music will be returned to life next Saturday at Sähkö, this legendary poetry club with spoken word artists and experimental live music and sound art here in Jyväskylä … inadvertently, this new piece also became the basis for a major sonic art project that I’ll be embarking on next year! Never underestimate the potential of weak, transient and ambiguous elements, those unpromising beginnings…)

AUGUST 28

Autumn Leaves (2023).

“But I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall…”

It must be that time of the year again, since one has to dig out their dataflow landscape designs and do some gardening before the next live set. Pure Data is like cycling: once you have learned how to flow with it, you just never forget how freeing it is!

AUGUST 13

The joy of developing new music for a forthcoming live-set, together with various spoken word artists (more info soon).

Knowing that the music will only exist in that brief moment of time and draw from a local culture and environment is hugely thrilling for me. I currently refer to the music as “city-sensitive afrorithmic soundscapes and futurhythmic environments”. I may need to clarify that a bit.

The image is based on a photo that I took ten years ago at a rural market on the border between Benin and Togo (last night the DJ at this party played an irresistible Afrobeat groove which turned out to be a track by Frankosun and the Family – one of my collaborators from Benin! I felt so happy for them).

Radio Campus Paris Interview

Recently I had a pleasure to be interviewed for the experimental music show Planisphère on Radio Campus Paris. Dubbed lovingly in French, the 8-minute edited interview forms part of the episode 44 at https://www.radiocampusparis.org/planisphere-44-lamour-18… (starts at 1-hour mark); a longer version will appear later on their social media channels. Topics covered: possible musics, generative music, sound and philosophy, site-specific art, interdisciplinary work, West Africa, Afrobeat, complexity, Aihio (my duo with Petteri Mäkiniemi).

The pictures in the trailer are from my recent bike rides around Paris.

Aihio – Outlands

My collaborative album with musician, composer and instrument maker Petteri Mäkiniemi has been finally released.

The album is called ‘Outlands’ and it’s released under the name Aihio, our new musical duo. Aihio is a Finnish word meaning musical motif, sketch, a work in progress – or in my mind now “a space where new ideas can emerge and develop”.

The album consists of 11 instrumental pieces that weave elements and influences from minimalism, experimental electronic music and West African musical styles into an impressionistic and atmospheric sound of their own. The composers and artists whose work has inspired the music include Arvo Pärt, Cluster, Fela Kuti, Jon Hassell and Pan Sonic, to name a few.

The music features Petteri on Ginette (an electronic musical instrument designed and built by him and based on the French electronic instrument ondes Martenot, developed in 1928) and me on Afrorithmics (afrobeat + algorithmic composition). The pieces have been improvised and recorded live in the studio with no overdubs; they have emerged during two rehearsal sessions when we were developing material for the Musica nova 2019 festival’s Tribute to Pan Sonic concert, to which we were invited to present new work with musicians from the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra at the Helsinki Music Centre, February 2019.

I can only describe the album as a journey through varied terrains while immersed in the landscape, wondering the universe above; or orbiting the Earth and seeing the patterns of geologies and civilizations unfold without borders (no experience of that however); or travelling across galaxies and soaking up some stardust (some previous experience of that); or just watching a deer wander across a nocturnal meadow engulfed by mist and a golden midnight sun.

The French music blog The Black Box has been the first to note the release, calling the album “a musical curiosity”. The review is in French, but here’s the main segment translated by Google:

“A strange mechanical rhythm seems to support the album, like the hum of an engine, or the timing of a machine tool. Yet behind it is well long organic synth tracks that shape the rest of the pieces. This duality is present throughout the album almost, forcing the listener to take his trouble in patience, to listen carefully to the music to detect all that is hidden there, namely a universe. So simple album? Movie soundtrack? Video game? It’s a bit all at once, and more.”

I rather like that description “to listen carefully to the music to detect all that is hidden there, namely a universe”, because that’s what I felt when mixing the pieces in the studio: it felt often as if I was looking at this world from a higher orbit, or gazing up at the stars, or being immersed in rich and varied terrains, outlands. It’s quite rare to have this kind of impressions when working in a more technical and objective mode, but that’s what Petteri’s playing always did to me. It’s also a great compliment when you don’t know exactly how the music was made, what constitutes the elements, which instruments have been used. It takes the music slightly back to that condition of appearing “as strange and mysterious to you as the first music you ever heard” (from Brian Eno).

Peter van Cooten from Ambientblog reviews the album and writes:

“Outlands is a highly original album, in sound as well as in its background concept. Even in the ‘experimental’ electronic genre, many sounds and processes are alike. Aihio manages to step outside the box and create their own unique sound. Literally!”

He wonders about the inclusion of Fela Kuti in our list of inspirations though. It was actually Brian Eno who said that the closest form of popular musics to ambient and generative music was Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat: they all evolve from a loose set of rules and ingredients, proceed organically through the layers of interlocking rhythms and elements, balance discipline and freedom, and create immersive environments – music as places. Naturally we didn’t try to imitate Fela’s Afrobeat but to use some of the textures, sounds and aesthetics, and transform them into new kinds of rhythmic terrains and, well, outlands.

The Bandcamp release includes higher quality audio and additional album artwork. The album will be available on Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and all the other digital music platforms from Aug 2 onwards.

I hope you’ll enjoy this journey and landscape as much as Petteri and I have. It’s been an adventure.

Musica nova 2019: Tribute to Pan Sonic

Warm thank you to everyone who came to our Musica nova 2019 – Tribute to Pan Sonic concert at the Helsinki Music Centre on Fri 1.2! It was a blast, pure joy! I feel a possible future was initiated.

I feel gratitude to the incredibly talented people I had the pleasure to play and develop the piece with: my collaborator, the musician and composer Petteri Mäkiniemi, and our cellist Jaani Helander and bass clarinettist Heikki Nikula.

My gratitude goes equally to the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Korvat auki ry and Musica nova Helsinki for inviting us and making this all possible! And not to mention the sound technician Erik Roos and visual technician Tuukka Aimasmäki for their invaluable work. And last but not least, to the fellow composer duos Ava Grayson & Tuomas Ahva, Jouni Hirvelä & Atte Häkkinen and Tytti Arola & Thorkell Nordal, whose delightfully diverse and imaginative pieces created indeed a rich and colourful evening in sound and music – similar to experiencing Pan Sonic in one of their concerts, always an adventure.

Petteri and I are currently in the studio mixing our first album that’s based on the material we developed for the concert. We’ll also release the concert recording, together with the live visual material, soon.

Here are some photos of the evening. All photos by Maarit Kytöharju (except the 2nd photo by Jukka Hautamäki).