‘Kasveille ja Eläimille’ is the vinyl debut album from 25-year old Pori (Finland)-based experimental musician Juho Toivonen.

It contains a mix of untuned piano, synthesizer and field-recordings. It is co-released by Futura Resistenza and Ultraääni.

“I love how random the notes can get in relation to each other”

How are you?

Juho Toivonen: At the moment I’m feeling rather great actually. I just returned from Sweden where I played some shows with my friends Tommi Keränen and Antti Setälä (Slogan Motto).

I could not find any other interviews with you while preparing for this interview, so can you tell me a bit about yourself?

I’m a Finnish musician who currently lives in, and is originally from, a midsized Finnish city called Pori (population of 80000 people). Pori is located on the west coast about 130 km from our old capital city Turku. I mostly spend my days studying to become a teacher and besides that I run a small label called Akti Records that focuses on releasing CDs and tapes in pretty limited quantities. Akti is more or less a hobby for me and an akashic library of some sorts. I also semi-actively arrange shows here in my hometown.

Can you tell me, in your own words, what I am listening to when I listen to ‘Kasveille ja Eläimille’?

On ‘Kasveille & Eläimille’ you can hear me improvise a piano on top of a bed of synthesizers and field recordings that I recorded last summer. On the LP I really wanted to explore how piano would work as the main instrument. I’m new to playing it and feel very curious about it. I used a piano a bit before on my previous tapes as a percussive instrument, but this time I wanted to go beyond that, exploring how to make melodies with my clumsy “non-pianist” fingers. Actually I’m not that interested in playing a piano, but the piano from our studio. It’s kind of banged up old Waldheim and doesn’t really stay in tune. It feels kinda like a ragged old hobo that has seen it all. I love how random the notes can get in relation to each other and I really can’t figure out the logic. But I found that it fascinates me and I always felt like playing with it. Improvising with the piano feels like dancing with an erratic person. It just might stomp on your toes out of nowhere and you just gotta figure out how to keep on with the almighty music.

But yeah! I was on a summer vacation last year from university and had some spare time, so I recorded the synthesizers and pianos that you can hear within two, or tops three days, if I remember correctly. Then I did some mixing for a short while and went and dubbed it on to a cassette tape as mono and sent it to my friend Samuli Tanner for mastering. He really did an awesome job with it and got what I was looking for. All my working happened in a studio space called Pori Film Lab that I share with a few of my fellow Pori based musicians. The space was originally created a few years back for making the foley sounds and recordings for the Mika Rättö’s (Circle) first full length movie ‘Samurai Rauni Reposaarelainen’. Or actually I think it might have been created after the movie. Heh, I’m not sure…

Anyways, I wanted to find out what piano is like as a musical mirror and for how long my crude and amateurish ways with the piano could last on an audio recording. For my enjoyment I found the instrument to be rather emergent, you know, the sonic outcome being more than just the mere sum of its parts.

Is the piano your main instrument?

No, no! I can hardly play any instrument the way they are supposed to. I can do something with guitar, but not that well with it either. When I initially started recording music I thought what the heck, since when do you need any of that stuff to be with the flow? And I’m not that interested in taming anything or being good at anything. I think I’m trying to reach the source of all sounds – or see even a glimpse of it – and I’m hunting for the feeling that you get when you are communicating with the music. To me it’s the purest form of communication. Crudely you could say that I’m trying to reach where it all comes from.

Who do you see as your influences?

I’m mad when it comes to music, always looking for new stuff to be inspired about. Lately I’ve been enjoying Gustav Danielbacka’s recordings under the moniker Incipientium and I’m always fascinated in what’s happening in New Zealand’s underground. It seems like an endless pit once you dive into that stuff. Antony Milton, William Henry Meung, Maxine Funke, LSD Fundraiser… the list is endless. Also the composer Julius Eastman has been kind of a big deal for me for a while and the early 00’s stuff from San Francisco – Jewelled Antler and that kind of stuff, music distributed by Aquarius Records back then. And Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru’s ‘Jerusalem’ has been rotating it`s sides at my home lately!

Well… Loren Chasse has been the really the most inspiring person to create music with. He has got such an intuitive way of working with sounds and I feel that our heads are in the same place. He is a teacher also, so his (and I’m sorry for putting words in his mouth) “giving people the experience of learning as I am learning through them” way-of-thinking resonates to me.

Alongside Loren I’ve got tons of support from fellow Finns Arttu Partinen and Jussi Lehtisalo who both run experimental music labels here in Finland. And my old neighbour who is a psychiatrist, Teemu Elo. Teemu kind of got me into meditation and seeing the little things in life. I love doing long walks with him, just getting inspired from his constant flow of mind. Also I have huge respect for both the older and younger Fenno-Scandia based artists in the experimental music scene – their recordings are a constant inspiration for me.

Do you see this album on vinyl as your “real debut?”

Well I think vinyl is merely just a different format with different limitations compared to tapes or CDs. Maybe they are a bit easier to move for the record labels releasing them?

Does a release on vinyl count as “the real thing?”

Yeah, it might be that ‘Kasveille & Eläimille’ felt a bit more like “the real thing,” just considering that in the first two tapes I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was still searching for the ways to do my music the way I wanted to. What really set the tone for those was that I was really fricking bad at recording stuff. That kind of made the sound that both ‘Lament & Rejoice’ and ‘Suurpää’ tapes have. Honestly I’m pretty new to this whole “music making stuff ” so it has taken me a while to understand the electronic devices that are required to make a recording. I’m still learning new stuff every time I go to the studio.

Just wondering: did you play in ‘bands with friends’ before you did the solo stuff?

Yeah and I still do! I’m constantly looking for new pathways in creating – and being within the music. I’ve found that communicating with others really pushes your perspective to yet uncharted areas.

Joeri Bruyninckx

Juho Toivonen Instagram / Twitter
Futura Resistenza Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp
Ultraääni Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp
Akti Records Official Website / Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp