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Vuorikaiku — a new sound gallery in Helsinki

The last two months I’ve been busy with a project that I’m very excited about. As an artist focused on sound, I have always hoped that someone would start a simple sound/listening gallery in Helsinki. In March 2014 I will open Vuorikaiku in Arabianranta.

Some contemporary art galleries here do exhibit sound works every now and then. Couple of years ago Petri Kuljuntausta opened his Akusmata in Töölö and Muu Gallery even runs a series of sound art compilation CDs, but I think there is still space for a more listening oriented galleries in Helsinki.

What I wanted to do differently, is to create a sound gallery where focus will be only on sound — not on the context, artistic background or technical aspects. Just a plain room with four speakers and somewhere to sit down. In fact, it isn’t even as much about sound art than it is about listening.

Of course, the exhibited works have their own artistic content, but in Vuorikaiku the audience doesn’t need any prerequisite information about sound art. In fact, works with complicated conceptual layers won’t be exhibited unless their actual sonic qualities are interesting enough. The gallery aims to open the ears and silence the conceptual mind.

I will be sharing more information about the gallery and the exhibitions at Vuorikaiku blog. You may also like Vuorikaiku at Facebook.

More to come soon! Keep your eyes — and more importantly, EARS — open!

26.02.2014
Taikatalvi & the Death of Snufkin

Today, I’m playing a live soundtrack to a sound theater play. Laura Jaakkola has directed Tove Jansson’s classic Taikatalvi (Moominland Midwinter) in a series of “adults’ bedtime stories”, that are theater plays performed by voice actors and a musician.

This seemed a good chance to repost an old song that never got much attention but one that I’m really happy with.

“The Death of Snufkin” was written (and recorded) during February Album Writing Month 2011 (14 songs in 28 days). It tells the story of the death of Snufkin from the Moomins. I remember describing it back then as a “Moomins at Spoonriver murder ballad”.

The song is based on a dream, which was most probably influenced by watching too much tv with my 1-year-old daughter. The story goes: the Moomins have locked themselves in their house because the Groke is coming. They’re scared and nervous. Alice, the daughter of the Witch, is with them. She’s holding the shotgun of Moominpappa. Suddenly she sees a shadow behind the window. Panicking she fires the gun. People run out to see if someone is hurt. Snufkin is lying on his back in the middle of broken glass, shocked but unhurt. No blood. Only a see-through hole in the middle of his chest. It is revealed that he doesn’t have a heart and is thus unharmed by the shot. (This is also why he can seem such a cold bastard sometimes.) He says it hurts nonetheless and he’d better be leaving. Moominpappa gives him a horse and tells him to ride to the nearby town for a doctor. Snufkin answers that the place where he goes next is a very dark place. The end of the dream.

They ought to film this. People with animation skills, contact me. I wanna see this as a dark black and white oldschool Tove Jansson style short animation!

Lyrics:

my life from the start was a neverending road
the continous movement of soul was my home
friends i had all over but they never had me
i left them when i wanted to feel i am free

now that i am gone the longing you feel
is exactly the same that always drove me

i hated the tyrants and scorned all the rules
made by selfish and ignorant fools
i didn’t own anything, only memories i kept
(because) i thought of property always as a theft

now that i am gone the longing you feel
is exactly the same that always drove me

if you needed advice you came to me
but what made me wander i couldn’t see
i felt if i stayed i’d be smothered to death
by your kindness and that’s why i left

now that i am gone the longing you feel
is exactly the same that always drove me

in a fear-born accident i got shot through the chest
the shooter was a girl and like me just a guest
i said it hurts even though i don’t have a heart
then i stood up and left to a place in the dark

now that i am gone the longing you feel
is exactly the same that always drove me

27.01.2014
Back to the future

Since I was a kid I have been interested in different concepts of time (thanks to Robert Zemeckis). Even today questions like linear vs cyclic time or single vs multiple timelines are very central to my music. Yesterday I watched a documentary about the Antikythera mechanism and was reminded of the amazing possibilities of today’s technology in modeling multiple timelines.

The Tuvans have a special way to think about time. While in the Western world it is common to think of future as being infront of of us, in the Tuvan worldview the future is behind us. So, instead of looking back to what I did last year, I could take a Tuvan look behind my shoulder to see what’s coming next.

In 2013 I did one major project: the Kumea Sound album. It was a huge effort in trying to combine my street music to my background as an electronic musician. To be honest, I had probably too many ideas, but in the end I had an album ready that I’m happy with. That said, it does feel more like a beginning than an end-product.

Probably my two favourite tracks of the album are Tantra and Frog’n’Bell. They both have a structure that is seemingly simple. They are looping, circular compositions that evolve hardly at all in terms of melody, rhythm or harmony. They twirl around same themes and only a few new elements are introduced throughout the tracks. What makes them special to me is how they combine a cyclic element with a linear element. Their structure seems free and defined at the same time.

Some of Brian Eno’s classic ambient works are more cyclic than linear. William Basinski used tape loops, but added a linear dimension to the compositions by capturing their gradual decay process while playing them back. Would it be possible to add even more timelines? On a record, maybe, but what about during a live performance? What about sound installation?

The Antikythera mechanism allowed the Greek to study multiple timelines of celestial objects in a single mechanical composition. With the machine it was possible to view circular timelines next to each other and observe their relation on a linear timeline. But psychological time is different. The logic of the heart is different. My ultimate aim is to combine the mathematical elegance of the Antikythera mechanism with the chaotic soul particles, not by fusing them into one singular object, but by letting them co-exist within a same space… I have some ideas what this could be in practice. You’ll see.

Ok, back to work! I’ll announce some extremely interesting Helsinki-based sound art projects soon!

08.01.2014