Radiant City

Finnish Abstractions

MAY 13

I had promised myself not to take nor post any photos during my writing residency – simply because the Finnish environment is way too familiar to me – but after three years in Paris I find myself wondering everything anew here. Trees become the benign aliens from the film Arrival, architecture has all the simplicity and functionality of the Arrakeen city (from Dune), and people…people are simply down to Earth. Or from some another green world.

I love the fact that when you walk five minutes in one direction, you are in the centre of a lively small town with people from all walks of life enjoying the spring sunshine; when you walk five minutes in another direction, you find yourself in the middle of a forest, with only the sound of birds, breeze in the branches and a gentle hum of trucks on a distant highway as your company.

And everything here works. Having just today met and talked to some others who have lived abroad, apparently we Finns have a reputation of being a bit “grumpy” – grumbling, critical, negative – when we are in foreign countries, and for a simple and decent reason: in terms of functionality, what is already bleedin’ obvious in Finland is still bleedin’ unobvious (read unnecessarily complicated) everywhere else. 😉 I obviously agree with the statement – I sign it, that’s me – but also with the necessity of having both worlds: the bleedin’ obvious and the bleedin’ unnecessarily complicated.

After the densely built and occupied environment of Paris, the emptiness and openness of this Finnish town invites one to imagine and build new spaces. Trees have just begun to bud and the environment to become green and fragrant. Tonight we had a jam session with local and global musicians (with me playing piano after a long time – I’d wanted to be the guy operating all the electronics but what can you do) at this book launch to accompany this writer, who read from his newly published poetry book about the moon, trains and metaphysics. We are all on our way to somewhere, somehow, all the time.

MAY 27

Exotic. “From another part of the world; foreign.” “Intriguingly unusual or different; excitingly strange.” “Having a strange or bizarre allure, beauty, or quality.” ”Not native; introduced from abroad; foreign.” “Strikingly unusual or strange in effect, appearance, or nature.”

One night in Paris I had a discussion with a dear friend of mine about the word ‘exotic’. While I wanted to revive the word and rescue it from its unfortunate colonial(istic) connotations, my friend felt the word had outlived its time and purpose.

And she was right, of course. But I just don’t know how else to describe in one word the “unusual, different, striking, strange, extraordinary, bizarre, fascinating, curious, mysterious, colourful, glamorous, peculiar, unfamiliar, outlandish” quality and feeling that I keep experiencing here.

It’s nothing dramatic, naturally, everything here remains more or less familiar if not mundane. But there’s a certain ‘exotic’ quality to many things when you observe and encounter them after a while. Philosopher Gilles Deleuze called this “the dawn of the world”, an atmospheric condition of the everyday presenting novel possibilities.

It’s the city festival of the arts – a Nuit Blanche or the Night of the Arts but for three days – and last night I went to see a gig at this legendary countercultural bar where I last set my foot in 25 years ago. Listening to this Ginsbergian slam poetry against Pan Sonic/Velvet Underground/Afrika Bambaataa -esque live music (afterwards I proposed a collaboration – they were so good), together with such a warm and down to earth crowd and the early summer/late evening sun setting behind large windows, I couldn’t help but feel that this Northern small town/cosmopolitan city experience appeared, for lack of a better word, rather exotic.

JUNE 4

A long walk in a light rain, following a lake after a lake after a lake. Exactly how many lakes are there in Finland? As if this was some kind of land of a thousand lakes!

JUNE 12

The Rainforest.

In the middle of this town there’s a nature conservation area, a wild forest with unique flora flourishing in a river valley the size of only three hectares. When you descend the steep stairs into the valley (or cove) at either end of the reserve, you could be forgiven for thinking that you have accidentally taken a wrong turn and arrived in the Amazon rainforest instead – except that there are no signs of illegal mining and logging operations going on here, not even legal ones.

The lush and dense vegetation; the vivid tapestry of bird songs; the invigorating air and scents; the murky and muddy waters of the river; the old wooden bridges shaped and broken by weather, erosion and time; and the near absence of any man-made sound, dampened on one side by the vegetation and deep slopes and on the other by water cascading through rapids…all conspire to create an impression that you are indeed deep in a jungle, alone in the wilderness, free and brave – despite the built environment always being just a few hundred metres away. Perhaps there are caimans in the water, too?

The reserve is much loved by the locals and visitors alike, yet it never gets crowded and you are left to roam this small plot of Eden on your own. Occasionally you might encounter an ornithologist or an ecologist, and they will excitedly tell you what constitutes the plant you are admiring or why a bird is singing in such an intricate or monotonous pattern. You emerge from the forest a lot calmer and more educated.

Next year I will be realising a forest-themed composition and sound installation, and for that this sanctuary has become an invaluable resource, “another green world” of study, contemplation and inspiration. As a curator friend of mine recently said, there’s no more perfect an installation than that of nature…

JUNE 22

Since arriving, I have discovered four rather surprising cities within this town (actually a city but the ‘town’ emphasises its cosy character).

This is:

1) The capital of Finnish hip hop. Even the actual capital city and other bigger cities here look (up) to this town for its sound, wordplay and collaborative spirit. My first reaction was “where are the banlieues? The inner cities and the housing estates?”. But Finnish hip hop doesn’t need urban decay to rap about – a tranquil forest will do!

2) The Athens of Finland. This is “the cradle of the arts and sciences” in the country (the very Finnish words for ‘art’ and ‘science’ were invented here – a great place for inventing new words!); nowadays the epithet also alludes to the town’s role as a major educational and cultural centre. With this local author – who is about to leave for a writing residency in the original Athens – we thought of yet another resemblance: both cities are defined by a hill in the middle!

3) The capital of Alvar Aalto. The eminent Finnish architect spent his formative years, from his early school years to starting his family and career, here. This city of lakes and hills has the largest number of significant building complexes designed by Aalto in the whole world. Alvar Aalto is always in the house!

4) The City of Light – although for slightly different reasons than Paris: the town is a global pioneer in urban lighting, actively investing in energy efficiency, safety and aesthetics in its designs that are unique (site-sensitive) to each area, enhancing their architecture and built environment while minimising light pollution. I’m yet to see their “Light Vision”/“ValoVisio” plan properly in action though, as it’s summer and the sun barely sets. Who knows, with all this Bronx-Athens-Aalto-Paris lineage going on and with all these culture makers active in the city, Jyväskylä could very well become also a city of new enlightenment one day…

Have a beautiful summer!

Absent City

Absent City (2008). Video by Megumi Matsubara / Assistant.

This moment now used to be an unimaginable future. Absent City, a mixed media installation by Megumi Matsubara, with the music/soundscape by me, in Tokyo in 2008.

I’m currently reworking this sound piece for the upcoming release Radiant City, which has now progressed from a short EP into a full-length album as well as an immersive sound installation (I should’ve known). The original Absent City piece is 90 minutes long of which the video here features the opening four, and for the new album it’ll be reduced to a 30-minute composition with four movements and additional instrumentation.

Time is indeed an interesting character (see eg. the films of Christopher Nolan). I hadn’t listened to the full 90-minute soundscape for over a decade because I’d regarded it as a failure, an embarrassing attempt at creating something between music and environment, music and city, music and sound art. The piece consists of seven lunch conversations, 90 minutes each, recorded in various public spaces around Tokyo between the artist herself and different people she’d invite each day. My job was to imagine these recordings as different instruments in an orchestra and turn them into an abstract composition, simultaneously resembling music and an urban soundscape. And since I only had one full day to do this, I had to work really fast: deciding, treating, “composing”, arranging and mixing the tracks almost in real-time. My lovely Spanish flatmates would pop in occasionally to listen and offer comments – and bring food from the dinner table! A quick getaway to a Finnish sauna and a cold beer – and back to my studio (with a couple of more beers) to finish and send the piece by midnight, when the dawn was breaking in Tokyo for the exhibition’s opening day.

The artist was really pleased with the result and said it was exactly what she’d been looking for. But I felt a sense of unease: I hadn’t had time to really sit back and evaluate what I’d done, let alone make any corrections if necessary. There were parts where I’d wanted to bring in more musicality, to explore the possibilities of “the studio as a compositional tool” more (see eg. the lecture of Brian Eno from 1979) but couldn’t. The soundtrack was already playing in Tokyo, while the summer in Helsinki blossomed elsewhere. My disappointment at what felt like a missed opportunity for something unique and proper made me soon forget all about the piece and move on.

Until a few weeks ago, when I came across it on my old hard drive and decided to give it a full listen. And boy what a trip through space and time that was, through a city that had become nonexistent – or been missing for too long! Here I was in some future city, a possible city, an invisible city, a multiplicity, a radiant city, experiencing an increasingly familiar yet heartening pattern: as time passes your criticality toward your work simply dissipates, gets forgotten, transforms into innocence and ageless fresh joy with lived experience. With the original condition absent, you’re free to experience the work and the world anew, those midnight hours of Helsinki turning into a dawn chorus in Tokyo. Sometimes the original condition is of course better and you’re right to leave it as it is, but here I found myself arriving in a future the seeds of which I’d planted all those years ago, without knowing how they might grow. What once had felt absent, was now starting to feel radiant.

Photography: Sebastian Mayer

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 🙂 )