new music

My new album SIINTO out now

My new album SIINTO is out now. Hooray!

This Bandcamp release will shortly be followed by all the other streaming platforms (incl. the unethical Spotify).

This has been my most challenging release to date, in terms of its scope and complexity. But I’m utterly thrilled with the results – and in the process I discovered a new kind of musical thinking that will form the basis of my unfolding doctoral studies from now on.

I hope you will enjoy this sonic journey (it may require some time and space, I admit).

Warmth X

SIINTO (Finnish for ‘shimmer’, ‘dawn’, ‘reflection’, ‘glow’) presents three compositions – or ‘geomusical objects’, as I began to hear them – that play with the notion of music as an environment and environment as music, exploring the potential between geography and music.

The tracks are long (20 minutes), with the ‘hooks’ occurring slowly and gradually over the course of the entire tracks; this is to better cater to the current demand for 2-minute songs with instant 15-second hooks.

(for a new culture is to be found in the spaces, silences and ruptures too incomprehensible to the optimisation algorithms)

It is meant as music to swim in, roam through, get lost in or bored by, zoom in/out of, journey with, discover alongside other things, be exited and returned to at any point.

Siinto and its variation Saraste (‘morning’, ‘dusk’, ‘first light’) originate from my artist residency at KulttuuriKauppila in Ii, Finland, July-August 2024: while there, I was invited to create a site-specific live performance that drew its inspiration and most of its sonic material from the local geography of Ii. The title track also features the voice of a dear friend who was born in Ii, abstracted from a poetry recording we had made years earlier; and while in the performance the voice travelled as a clearer figure in a landscape, here it has become more ecological – a sustaining part of that environment.

Kajo (‘soft light’, ‘reflection’) forms the backing track I created for poet Sanna Karlström’s spoken word performance at Sähkö #42 in Jyväskylä, Finland, September 2023. The idea has again been for a situation/site-specific soundscape composition, drawing thematically and sonically from the local environment and culture – and, in this case, from the content of Karlström’s poems as well. The collaboration was made possible by my residency at the Writers’ House/Kirjailijatalo in Jyväskylä, May-December 2023.

A particularly vital layer in these geomusical objects emerges from the ‘stratified’ recordings of Ginette, originally performed by Petteri Mäkiniemi (the inventor of this wonderful electronic instrument).

My deepest gratitude to Petteri Mäkiniemi, Heta Kaisto, Sanna Karlström, Gregor Zemljic, Diego Castro-Magas and Alicia Reyes for bringing this album to life; the Orpheus Instituut; and to KulttuuriKauppila and Kirjailijatalo for their transformative residencies and generous invitations for me to engage meaningfully with their respective localities.

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!

The future sound of Ghent

Greetings from Ghent, where the adventures in advanced studies and research in music continue. (the picture above is of Amsterdam, though)

I’m currently taking very few – and rushed – photos here as there’s barely any time. But sometimes I have to stop and pinch myself to make sure I’m not living in some fairytale town from another era and world.

While I’ve settled well in Ghent, in my office and our studios at the Orpheus Institute I often find myself floating in space: music as we know it – records, streams, songs, performances, composers, songwriters, musicians – suddenly feels like a thing of the past, and we’ve now entered a new period where the function and purpose of music suggest something more expanded and transdisciplinary. Naturally, a lot of this has to do with my own thinking space and reading and research that I’m conducting; we also have composers and musicians firmly rooted in the Medieval and Classical periods (and in-between and after), but also to just observe them interact and collaborate with those working with augmented reality (AR), intelligent systems (AI) and (non-)anthropocentric hyperobjects is hugely exciting: there’s a sense of a continuum – long-term thinking and visioning in regards to culture, creativity and intelligence – that is strangely absent from our current political and economic activity (where it would be needed most).

Occasionally though, I do find myself missing the days when music mostly meant Kate Bush or Prince (et al.) on the radio, and skipping songs meant going to a record shop and skipping through cassettes, CDs and vinyls until you found the ones you wanted to buy and own. Music had a clear cultural function and significance back then – and it sounded unbeatably fantastic!

I’ve been working a lot with the latest AI music generators out there – for 30 minutes in total, to be honest, then I felt compelled to quit (compare this with the 30+ years that I’ve been making music for). Conclusion: they are the most boring thing (after our current economic and political ideologies) in the existence of the universe.

AI music generators can produce utterly perfect and fantastic music in almost every conceivable style in seconds, often surpassing even human creators in quality. Heck, I’d always yearned to hear futuristic arabic punk reggae, but since no one was producing such music, I wrote a short prompt, and in less than a minute I had a fantastic track of, well, futuristic arabic punk reggae! I transformed tracks from my latest album Bloom – pure electronica – into symphonic orchestra renditions in the space of five minutes, and the dubious sound quality notwithstanding, they could potentially be mistaken for the work of some talented classical composer if used in the background of a film, for example.

But that’s not what music is or has ever been about.

If music to you is merely a capitalist pursuit (an end product with the minimum cost), then these AI music generators are perfect – and in my opinion there is nothing wrong with anyone (be they advertisers, companies, creators, listeners etc.) using these tools to get the music they want, instantly for free. Go for it!

If music to you, however, is something more precious and evolved – life, art, philosophy, understanding, progress, journey, intelligence, love, culture/civilization, a deeper and more elevated state of existence perhaps – then I’m afraid the secret to this still lies in the old, long and arduous, process of trying and failing, trying again, failing better. For great music has always been more about the process than the product: the life that has gone into making that final product. Make that process/life count, and the end result will be imbued with music that transcends the shelf life of any capitalist-consumerist product.

Music that just sounds like music is not really music (an old argument of mine which suddenly became a source of an animated debate in our last seminar).

In short: to come up with great music by pressing a couple of buttons feels empty; to come up with great music by learning, trying and actually playing feels like an enlightenment.

From the floatation tank that is my office, I hear medieval church bells ringing alongside distant sirens, footsteps on cobblestones, birds chirping, men arguing, children playing and laughing; my colleague on the phone explaining non-anthropocentric compositional practices to someone on another continent; Brahms being practiced on a grand piano next door; generative NFT (non-fungible token – or “No F*cking Thanks!”) sound art on my screen.

It does feel like the beginning of something exciting, an intellectual as well as creative adventure toward “something that nobody has a name for” (after Kevin Kelly), which simply wouldn’t be possible in a purely artistic or academic practice. I might be wrong, of course – but then that would simply be the start of something new again: a process, a journey, an open discovery.

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.”

Bright Blue

‘Bright Blue’ from the album Interspaces (2022). The track features Omar Harb on melodic bass. The original light reflection footage in this visualizer is by Petteri Mäkiniemi, provided courtesy of the artist.

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Bright Blue continues to be the most downloaded and streamed track from the album. If I actually had the resources, the music video for this would consists of a dancer performing a minimalistic yet inventively elaborate and graceful contemporary dance choreography. The scenography – lighting, set and costume design – as well as the cinematography would reflect this in a similar fashion, exuding some kind of timeless futurity.

The title itself is a take on Pale Blue Dot, a phrase coined by astronomer and author Carl Sagan reflecting on the final photograph of planet Earth taken by the Voyager 1 space probe before it exited the Solar System and headed toward interstellar space. While we indeed live on a tiny pale blue dot – contrary to the delusions of grandeur of some nationalist leaders and fervent tribalist ideologues – Earth is also a bright blue marble gliding in the vastness of space, shimmering with life and its vast, shared and diverse potential (although if the late capitalists and their fervent ideologues get their own delusions satisfied, Earth could very well turn into a carbon black hole – or pit?). In terms of planets, ‘bright blue’ is often used to describe Neptune, which I must have flown by at some point when working on the music. In any case, this was simply a working title, and since giving titles is the hardest part of the creative process, you are often stuck with the file name you hastily improvised when saving the initial sketch.

We recorded Omar’s bass at Studio Bleu in the vibrantly multicoloured 10th arrondissement of Paris. Afterwards, while Omar had to leave for his next rehearsal, I sat down for a glass of wine at my favourite café next door, where the colour of my usual corner table is baby blue. The blues caused by my recent heartbreak had begun to fade and the future was starting to appear bright again: like that azure morning sky in a turquoise Mediterranean bay later that summer…

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 🙂 )

Sharawadji out now

The latest album of mine, Sharawadji, will be available on all the major music streaming services on Fri 11 February. The album is currently available on Bandcamp where the release includes additional artwork and high quality download.

Here are a few photos of some of the locations where the album was recorded (I have lost most of my photos to broken harddrives over the years). Had a little nostalgia trip while going through these, and it reinforced my view that a piece of music is indeed a lot more than the end product: it’s the whole process and journey that goes into making it (that’s why AI can never replace music made by humans: it can of course make music based on its own processes and journeys, but never replicate the human experience…).

Sharawadji: a new release coming soon

// A new curiosity release coming soon //

Next month I’ll be releasing an album of curiosities titled Sharawadji. The album presents a fusion of Somadelia, Juju Space Jazz, Sahelian Generative, Nordic Throb and Post-Tribal Bliss (yes, existing genres have become rather inadequate to describe current musics ). Recorded and crafted in various locations over the years, the music paints an impression of the rhythms, melodies and sonic textures of its geographies: Lagos, Cotonou, Ouagadougou, Dakar, Fez, London, Barcelona, Berlin, Helsinki and Paris.

The release – which has also gone through titles like ‘Migrant’, ‘The Itinerant’, ‘Border Eraser’ and ‘Invisible Geographies’ – consists of outtakes from my forthcoming Interspaces and Earth Variations albums as well as from the previous Flash of the Spirit, Pulses/Radiance and Sahara albums – featuring also Noel Saizonou of Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble on vocals and percussion. It’ll also include a previously unreleased track from LOS-HEL: Possible Cities, with a Lagos Soundscape by Emeka Ogboh.

As Interspaces and Earth Variations continue falling into place (or into space) slowly, delayed by me continuing to encounter new exciting musicians and possible collaborators here in Paris, I came to notice these outtakes together formed already a rather coherent and interesting whole: like a more colourful sibling or ancestor to the two albums-in-progress. More info to follow soon.

composer / sound artist / writer