SIINTO

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 new album / (r)evolutions

June 20

While Finland and the rest of the Nordic countries are celebrating the Midsummer, our research cluster MetamusicX at Orpheus Instituut here in Ghent is celebrating the ends of very long yet transformative journeys, and the beginnings of rather exciting new ones! (more info on the latter in the autumn)

For my dear colleague Alicia (not pictured here) and me, it’s the completion of our compulsory doctoral studies and the start of full immersion into our respective research-based practices; for our dear friend and colleague Adam (pictured here), it’s the completion of his dissertation and becoming a post-doctoral fellow in our cluster, joining Diego, Martin and Paulo. New (r)evolutions are in the air!

I feel utterly lucky having found and become part of this research cluster (and Orpheus Instituut in general): the level of critical, experimental, creative, open-ended, rigorous and enthusiastic thinking – not to mention the sense of humour – has finally provided space for my own expression to flourish; I find myself in a place where all my diverse interests are able to converge, coalesce – and potentially evolve into something new and meaningful! Yet this should be a basic condition for every citizen on Earth: the freedom, safety and unconditional support to discover and pursue one’s dreams, no matter the background. Why can’t we solve this simple societal design on a global scale?

P.S. My new album SIINTO will be out as soon as I receive the final masters from my mastering engineer…

June 2

A quick update. My new album SIINTO will be out this month. Yay!

The exact release date is difficult to set though, as I’m still listening to and deciding on the final masters. But like the music itself, the release process can also be emergent, gradual, soft, incidental, serendipitous, rule-breaking – no need for the usual hyping and stuff!

The release has been delayed by my compulsory, first-year doctoral studies: I’ve been utterly busy with the many exciting new projects, encounters and discourses this year has brought (attached a few random, recent photos I’ve managed to take, mostly unrelated to my topics, of course). And the album, for its part, has become an opening, an inception, for a whole new research avenue and artistic thinking that will form the core of my studies from now on. Rather thrilled!

More info soon/in due course. Greetings from a sunny and warm, verdant Ghent!

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!