Ambient and Conceptual music

While, as a musician, I consider myself mainly as a songwriter, I’ve sometimes sidetracked to more ambient and/or conceptual paths of musical self-expression. ”Kellot” (”Clocks”, 1994), a nine-minute improvisation with a resonator guitar and digital delay, has been an important piece for me and one of the reasons I ended up a few years later making music for theatrical pieces.

The first theatrical piece I was commissioned to do music was Woyzeck-tehdas (”The Woyzeck Factory”, 1996), a sort of modernization of the Büchner classic for an improvising ensemble of actors and a deejay – that was me. This track is a short compilation of soundscapes and music I wrote and recorded for the piece with my cheap SounfBlaster soundcard.

”Sanaleikki” (”Wordplay, 1998) is a more conceptual piece and plays with Finnish words ”minä” (”I”) and ”sinä” (”you”) in a purportedly intimate way. All the sounds are human made, with the aid of samples triggered by midi messages from an aleatoric composing program.

After writing my second novel Alshain (2006) I decided to write a soundtrack for the book: atmospheric music to listen while you’re reading. Unfortunately I haven’t (yet) followed suit with the later novels, but who knows...

Then, I’ve been performing live by reading excerpts from the books with improvised soundscapes made with a guitar and effects pedals, something I plan to do in the future as well.