What was the creative process like for this particular "Typhoon?"

I wrote the first draft for the song on an airplane while it was landing on the way to Lagos, Nigeria. I used a Teenage Engineering OP-1 and a SP404mk2 to create the chord structure, initial beat and a bassline that I later replaced with an electric bass in the studio. The first draft had the working title "Landing".

I then took the draft to the studio and started creating a melody on it, mostly first improvising singing with nonsense words and then streamlining the melody. Then I also played the bassline using a Precision Bass and overdubbed it also with a Telecaster guitar through a fuzz pedal. I also tried programming some drums on it, but couldn't quite make the beat click.

The lyrics came to me almost in a single sitting – or walking, more specifically – when I was walking in the Finnish city called Hanko that's known for its maritime activities. Finally, when I realized I couldn't get the groove right with programmed drums, I got a Pearl drum kit to the studio, mic'd it and almost the very first take already showed me this was the way to go. This was also instrumental in that live drums became a big deal on the new album Songs About Sadness due later this year.

Was there any challenge that you encountered while making the track?

The biggest challenge was getting the rhythm to click. The original beat had elements I'd programmed using the SP404mk2 and some samples (I think a sample of me digging into my kids' crate of Duplo Legos made it to the final mix, overdubbing the snare). I then tried several acoustic drum kits on Maschine Mk3 but none of them felt right.

Ultimately I ended up setting up a drum kit in the studio and although I hadn't played or recorded acoustic drums in more than 15 years, it immediately clicked into place. I was especially astounded how well I could make the drums sound already as raw recording, considering that I set them up in a basically untreated space next to my control room.

How does "Typhoon" fit into your overall artistic vision and what can listeners expect from you in the future?

I think this was one of the key songs in shaping up my new album overall. One interesting aspect of it is that it leans a lot towards some rock genres, even though previously my music had more of an electronic vibe to it. On the upcoming album overall, there are also some electronic vibes, vintage synths and drum machines and stuff, but there is also a tangible rock influence on many of the tracks.

I really enjoy working with live instruments right now, and I think every single sound on this track as well as the new album has been hand crafted from the scratch, whether it's by micing instruments or programming synths and drum machines. I think it lends a kind of an extra layer of expression to my music, even though I don't really have a puritanistic "no presets" mindset either. It's just so much fun to make sounds that I don't see why I wouldn't put a lot of that into my music.

Can you tell us more about you as an artist?

I worked as a professional musician, producer and composer through 1997–2007. After that, I got pulled into the world of research and I've mostly worked as a researcher, teacher and writer. Currently, my main job is as a Professor of Practice at Aalto University. After my professional career, I've released several self-published albums under the pseudonym Songsworth, but I really got back into music making around 2018 when I realized that I had re-discovered the same joy of music making I'd enjoyed back in the high school.

At around this time, I also decided to start releasing music under my own name – after my debut solo album from 1999 everything I'd done had either been in collaboration or under pseudonyms. The first album from this was North Star Revisited that was released in 2023.

The new album, Songs About Sadness, has really shaped and renewed my music making a lot. In particular, the interesting thing is that instead of working mostly inside a computer, I've really started to enjoy playing a lot of different instruments – guitars, bass, drums, percussion, piano, rhodes – as well as employing mostly hardware synths like the Deckard's Dream, Prophet 5, Minimoog, Juno-106, Syntrx and Yamaha SY99 and outboard drum machines like Perkons and TR909. Music making is a very physical, very spontaneous thing for me now, and it feels the more I gain distance from needing to think about the music too much, the more genuinely I can express the things that drive me to make music in the first place.

Are there any specific themes or messages that you aim to convey through your music?

I think the overall theme for my new album is sadness and melancholy, but not necessarily as a bad thing. I think by and large I've had a very optimistic outlook in life, but at the same time, I tend to also lean into a bit of a brooding side emotionally every now and then. I really connected with an idea that I think originates with Fiona Apple, that life is not about being happy – but about being able to experience all the different aspects of what life has to offer, including sadness and melancholia.

Having said that, the last couple of years have been a bit on the rougher side, and I've felt that being able to deal with those feelings through music has been immensely valuable to me. When life hands you lemons, make songs about lemons, I guess.

And even “Typhoon,” even though the melody and vibe is pretty upbeat, is a song I originally wrote as a kind of a pep talk for myself to get up and go when it's felt hard to keep on moving forward. On the upcoming album, there are reflections on family life, personal dreams, religion, identity and also some social and world issues that I'm not happy about, all reflecting different aspects of melancholia.

Given how transformative creating this music has been for me, I hope the listener would be able to experience some of that same transformation. Not to get rid of sadness, but to embrace it and to make it into something that's almost bittersweet to live with.

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