Ilpo Jauhiainen

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).

Ginette & Afrorithm – Musica nova 2019 Q&A

As Petteri Mäkiniemi and I are preparing to perform in the Pan Sonic Tribute concert at the Helsinki Music Centre next Friday 1.2, as part of the Musica nova 2019 festival, we did a brief interview for the festival about the upcoming performance. The original posts are in Finnish, recreated here in English. Topic: Petteri’s Ginette and my “afrorithmic” system.
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In the Tribute to Pan Sonic concert the composer, music producer and sound artist Ilpo Jauhiainen and the musician, composer and instrument maker Petteri Mäkiniemi will present a partially improvised new work in which electroacoustic composition, minimalism and experimental electronic music meet West African musical influences, in a form inspired by Pan Sonic’s abstract, subdued and uncompromising aesthetic.

The concert will be realized together with musicians from the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra at the Helsinki Music Centre on Fri 1 February.

Ginette

Petteri, what is Ginette?

Ginette is an electronic musical instrument designed and built by me, based on the French ondes Martenot electronic instrument developed in 1928. Ginette is played so that the right hand controls the pitch by moving a ring along a wire, while the left hand controls the loudness of the note with a stepless key. The design of the instrument enables expressive gestures such as vibrato, glissando and a wide dynamic range similar to bowed string instruments. All this happens through the fingertips of the player, not by turning knobs. In the musical performance I’m fascinated by the naked presence of human condition – how for example a gentle touch of the hand or an intimate blow from the mouth is audible in the characteristic sound of an instrument. This is also possible in electronic music. Currently I’m developing a new, more versatile version of Ginette.

Petteri Mäkiniemi (l) and Ilpo Jauhiainen (r). Photo: Heta Kaisto

Ilpo, in your performance you intend to use elements of field recordings made in West Africa that can be set to progress autonomously during the gig with the help of generative algorithms. What does this self-evolution of algorithms mean in terms of the live performance?

Generative i.e. self-evolving and -organizing elements bring a degree of surprise and added liveliness to the performance, both for the audience and performers alike. In this scenario, a computer sort of improvises how it transforms and reproduces the source material with the rules and processes that we’ve provided, and operates thus as one of the “human” performers. Algorithms can be designed to produce almost any kind of behaviour, but we’re fascinated mostly by certain consistency where the music evolves in a slightly random, probabilistic manner while retaining a recognizable character – like a river that flows. In our performance one of the field recordings progresses and changes quite freely on its own whereas with the others the program introduces tiny variations around the gestures made by the performer.

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Recently we also had our first rehearsal with the full ensemble for the concert. The ensemble consists of Jaani Helander (cello), Heikki Nikula (bass clarinet), Petteri Mäkiniemi (Ginette) and me (“afrorithmic generator”).

From the clockwise: Jaani, Heikki, Ilpo, Petteri (taking the photo)

This was my first time of playing together with members of a philharmonic orchestra, and it felt and sounded exhilarating!