Jäkälä, Album #2 out now

My second album "Artificial Latvamäki - Jäkälä" got finished today. It was a long process. These songs have seen a lot. Use the player below to listen to it or go to http://latvamaki.bandcamp.com

The album is out there on "pay what you want" basis. Feel free to pay nothing for I am truly honored if you enjoy the music and share it with your friends, that's enough for me.



Here's what I wrote about it.

Back in 2009 when I started working with my debut album, I noticed that I have too many songs to release just one album, so I divided them into two different groups with different styles. Jäkälä (Lichen) is the follow-up album to 2011 released album Rauta. Featuring 6 tracks with more organic approach to electronic music where Rauta (iron) was more synthesized and industrial in some way.

Most of these songs have traveled a long road with me. Some have started their journey over seven years ago. At some points along the process I thought they never see the light of day and reach the ears of the listeners. Fortunately some of them were leaked out unfinished to the internet many years ago, and I received a lot of feedback about them. This feedback was a driving force for me in my aim to cross the finishing line and apply the finishing touches to the music.

However, I didn't feel like polishing the music endlessly. In the process of mixing and mastering them I had to constantly revert to versions which dated many years back, just because they were much more original and intuitive in their unprocessed form. I had to find a balance of rawness in every track. While listening, you will find instruments and sounds that are clearly bit too loud or unnecessarily harsh. This is something I have preserved. It makes the songs play out more dangerously and unexpectedly and as such they much better serve their purpose of being mirrors into my soul.