ORIGINS In 1978, Brian Eno released the album Ambient 1, Music for airport. He described the album's music as "designed to soothe and think." A musical genre called ambient had been born. This kind of soundscapes had been built for a long time by various composers and artists as well. The cover images of Eno's record is enlargements of the map. Map's magnification and cropping removes the location information from the image and leaves only interesting-looking graphic elements, yet still remaining the image to be recognized as a map. Eno released four albums in the Ambient series and all of them have a map-based cover art.
Between 1978 and 1982, at the time when the series were released, I had no idea about Brian Eno’s music. Instead, I was familiar with the colorful school maps that had to be studied in the school and which I found intriguing. Maps at the time provided an interesting and easy way to explore the world. The graphic elements of the maps, the various symbols, the height differences and, for example, the colors describing the quality of the soil, helped to create an idea of the object which was under the study. The idea of the object might have been quite different from the reality, as this was later to be revealed, but the image was at least personal. My interest in maps has remained since those times. Perhaps those personal studies have been affected so that I have plunged into work on shapes and colors throughout most of my adult life. Exploring and editing maps has been involved in my work all along and has been one of the starting points for this Off the map project.
Another important influencer for the project is journalist Jukka Mikkola and his Space Junk program, which has been broadcast on YLE (Finnish national broadcast company) for 30 years. Jukka Mikkola's soothing intergalactic voice and the exciting music he presented forced me to listen to the radio on late Sunday evenings at the end of the 90's. Through this, the pioneers and "big names" of electronic music (e.g. Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Brian Eno, Steve Roach, Robert Rich) as well as new, lesser-known artists and bands became familiar to me. One particularly impressive Finnish band was Nemesis, which music had clear echoes of the artists mentioned above, but it was still original and extremely professional. The 1999 Sky Archelogy album was released by the official record company and it found its way quite easily onto my record shelf as well. After that, the publications were self-published and in order to get them, one had to dare to contact directly the Nemesis primus motor Ami Hassinen. He became familiar via emails over the years. In 2010, I wanted background music for my object / sculpture exhibition and it was obvious to ask it from Nemesis. The self-published album 1:4:9 was born as a result of this, and since then it has been a pleasure to be involved in making cover art for the records and helping to organize the performances. By Nemesis and Hassinen I got to know the magical bass guitarist Juha-Matti Rautiainen.
During 2018 and 2019, I did image processing experiments on 70's map scans. The starting point was very Eno-like, to extract a very small area from the maps, enlarge it and use an image editing program to remove text information from the remaining area (initially selecting, but later completely). I took one step forward from Eno's idea, that's how I at least want to think, and started to edit different color variations from one image. It was not intention to create imaginary maps or places. The important thing was that the object should be from some particular, right place. Although the original maps were not made in terms of aesthetics but in terms of information, they are in my point of view, perfect works of art. This is what I wanted to emphasize by means of image processing.
The original idea was to present images in social media channels in addition of “real” exhibitions. Since the soundscape is, in my opinion, an integral part of these works, my thoughts were again directed at the Nemesis camp of course. However, due to various hurries and a lack of personal interest, the exhibition activity began to feel like a distant idea at this stage. But what if we developed a publication in which music is inspired by images, that have been inspired by music...
So here we are, in the beginning of crazy year 2021, with brand new CD release by Nemesis & Juha-Matti Rautiainen. Packed to 8-panel digisleeve with 28 page booklet full of my map images. I have also produced a very limited set (20) boxes, including a CD, a booklet 20 x 20 cm, three pieces of print 20 x 20 cm map images and the album download code. The album contains 10 tracks and each track has its own map image. The geographical location of the map, as well as the shapes and colors of the processed map image have been selected by the best reflection of the associations that the song has created for me. When naming the songs, we ended up using only geographical coordinates. We wanted to keep the object of the picture enigmatic, but still to be solved, for example with the help of GoogleMaps.
Price: 50 €, include shipping to address in Finland. Shipping to E.U. +10 €. Shipping costs to the rest of the world are so expensive that delivery is mainly to Finland and E.U.
Orders and inquiries directly by email: Kimmo Heikkilä, info@ihmekammari.fi
PROJECT
ORIGINS Vuonna 1978 Brian Eno julkaisi albumin, ensimmäisen neljän levyn sarjassa, Ambient 1, Music for airports. Hän luonnehti levyn musiikkia "designed to induce calm and space to think". Musiikkigenre jota ambientiksi kutsutaan oli syntynyt. Toki samanhenkistä äänimaisemaa oli rakennettu jo pidemmän aikaa muiden säveltäjien ja artistien toimesta. Enon levysarjan kansikuvat ovat suurennoksia kartoista. Suurennnos ja rajaus hävittävät kuvasta kohteen sijainnista kertovan informaation, jäljelle on jäänyt vain mielenkiintoisiltä näyttäviä graafisia elementtejä, toki tunnistettavuus kartaksi on edelleen jäljellä.
Vuosina 1978-1982, levysarjan ilmestymisen aikoihin, minulla ei ollut mitään käsitystä Brian Enon musiikista. Sen sijaan tuttuja olivat värikylläiset koulukartat joita tuli tutkittua sekä pakosta että omasta mielenkiinnosta. Kartat tarjosivat tuolloin mielenkiintoisen ja helpon tavan tutkimusmatkailuun. Karttojen graafiset elementit, erilaiset symbolit, korkeuseroja ja vaikkapa maaperän laatua kuvaavat värit auttoivat luomaan mielikuvan tutkittavana olevasta kohteesta. Mielikuva saattoi olla ihan muuta kuin todellisuus, näin on myöhemmin paljastettu, mutta mielikuva oli ainakin henkilökohtainen.
Mielenkiinto karttoihin on säilynyt noista ajoista saakka. Ehkäpä noilla henkilökohtaisilla tutkimusmatkoilla on ollut vaikutusta siihen, että olen ajautunut työstämään muotoja ja värejä lähes koko aikuisiän. Karttojen tutkiminen ja muokkaaminen on ollut mukana työskentelyssä kaiken aikaa ja ne ovat olleet tämän Off the map -projektin lähtökohta.
Toinen tärkeä vaikuttaja on toimittaja Jukka Mikkola ja hänen Yleisradiossa 30 vuotta lähetetty Avaruusromua-ohjelma. Jukka Mikkolan galaksienvälinen tyynnyttävä ääni ja hänen esittelemä jännittävä musiikki pakottivat kuuntelemaan radiota myöhäisinä sunnuntai-iltoina 90-luvun lopulla. Tätä kautta tulivat tutuiksi niin elektronisen musiikin pioneerit ja "suuret nimet" (mm. Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Brian Eno, Steve Roach, Robert Rich) kuin myös uudet, vähemmän tunnetut artistit ja yhtyeet. Yksi erityisen vaikuttava yhtye oli suomalainen Nemesis jonka musiikissa kuului selviä jälkikaikuja edellämainittujen artistien tuotannosta mutta se oli silti omintakeista ja äärimmäisen ammattimaisen kuuloista. Vuoden 1999 Sky Archelogy levy julkaistiin virallisen levy-yhtiön toimesta ja se löysi helposti tiensä minunkin levyhyllyyni. Tämän jälkeen julkaisut olivat omakustanteita ja niiden saamiseksi täytyi rohkaista mieli ja ottaa yhteyttä suoraan kotimaisen elektronimusiikin hermokeskukseen Kokkolaan. Primus motor Ami Hassinen tuli vuosien saatossa sähköpostitutuksi. Vuonna 2010 halusin taustamusiikkia objekti/veistos-näyttelyyni ja sen pyytäminen Nemesis-yhtyeeltä oli ilmeisen selvää. Omakustannelevy 1:4:9 syntyi tämän tuloksena ja sen jälkeen on ollut ilo olla mukana tekemässä kansitaidetta levyihin ja edesauttamassa esiintymistilauuksien järjestymisessä. Nemesiksen ja Ami Hassisen kautta olen tutustunut myös maagiseen basistiin Juha-Matti Rautiaiseen.
Vuosien 2018 ja 2019 aikana tein kuvankäsittelykokeiluja 70-luvun karttojen skannauksissa. Lähtökohta oli hyvin Enomainen, poimia kartoista hyvin pieni alue, suurentaa se ja poistaa kuvankäsittelyohjelman avulla teksti-informaatiota jäljellejääneestä alueesta. Yhden askeleen eteenpäin otin Enon ajatuksesta, näin ainakin haluan kuvitella, ryhdyin muokkaamaan yhdestä kuvasta erilaisia värivariaatioita. Tarkoituksena ei ollut luoda kuvitteellisia karttoja tai paikkoja. Tärkeää oli, että kohde on jostakin tietystä, oikeasta paikasta. Vaikka alkuperäisiä karttoja ei ole tehty esteettisyyden vaan informaation ehdoilla, ovat ne itsessään mielestäni täydellisiä taideteoksia, tätä halusin korostaa kuvankäsittelyn keinoin.
Alkuperäinen ajatus oli esitellä kuvia sosiaalisen median kanavien lisäksi "oikeissa" näyttelyissä. Koska äänimaailma kuuluu mielestäni oleellisena osana näitä teoksia joten ajatukset suuntautuivat tietysti taas Nemesis-leiriin. Erinäisten kiireiden ja henkilökohtaisen kiinnnostuksen puutteen takia näyttelytoiminta alkoi tuntua kuitenkin vieraalta ajatukselta tässä vaiheessa. Mutta entäpä jos tästä kehiteltäisiinkin julkaisu jossa musiikki on saanut innoituksensa kuvista jotka ovat saaneet innoituksensa musiikista...
Levy sisältää 9 kappaletta ja jokaisella kappaleella on oma karttakuvansa. Kartan maantieteellinen kohde sekä käsitellyn karttakuvan muodot ja värit on valikoitu kuvastamaan mahdollisimman hyvin kappaleen minulle luomia assosiaatioita.
Ami Hassinen63°50'22.2"N 23°08'03.2"E
VIDEOS
ABOUT THE PROCESS This album is a collaboration between three parts; Nemesis the pioneering finnish ambient music group, Juha-Matti Rautiainen the ambient musician, who has produced already two excellent albums of music realized with bass guitar and a huge set of effects and loopers and finally Kimmo Heikkilä, who is a visual artist and designer with great reputation and originality. Kimmo has designed several album covers for both Nemesis and Juha-Matti Rautiainen Soundscapes. The idea for a collaboration had been in the air for several years and eventually Kimmo got his idea of working with the aesthetics of geographical maps. He produced a series of graphics based on old maps. This called for some musical input to make the project more immersive and he asked Nemesis and J-MR to provide the soundtrack. That was very easy decision as they all had been working together in different constellations and for different projects for quite some time. The theme was decided to be about different places and spaces the map-like paintings could depict. The musical side was to create soundtracks for those places. The musicians decided to have one, extended jam session to create the music. And so the gear was hauled to an old Kino movie theatre in Kaustinen on one August day in 2020. The stage, where the silver screen had once been, was filled with synths, keyboards and a large array of effect pedals. Kaustinen is a part of the peaceful countryside in the middle of Finland and thanks to the Covid 19 restrictions, it was even more deserted than it usually is. Ami and Juhamatti spent one evening setting everything up and were joined by Joni the next day. The day two was devoted to the actual recording. The only audience was the ghostly, empty seating of the movie theatre, with appropriate summer rain and occasional thunder outside… After getting the recording equipment ready, we had a short conversation about what we would try to portray musically for the next 20 min. Then the rec button was pushed and off we went. This method ruled the day… we had just a few coffee breaks, otherwise it was just pure improvisation. In the evening we had several hours of multitrack live material on a SD card. It was absolutely magical for it was so easy. The music just flowed and painted the different audio pictures and soundscapes very effortlessly. In the evening we felt we had achieved something rather extraordinary… Then it was the time for the mixing stage. When I prepared the test-mixes, I just took out the few bum notes, technical glitches, tests for a sound, etc. When we all were listening to the early mixes at our homes, everyone started to feel slowly that the results, for once, exceeded the good expectations. The music seemed to have a life of its own, a spirit; something much more than our individual contributions could hint at. Of course, the long stretches of music were not going to fit an CD, so it was a hard prospect to select and mix the most essential parts for shorter tracks. Eventually, that also was a bit easier than it seemed at first, as the material was mostly so strong that it was more a case of editing than remixing. It was basically a question of selecting the brightest stones and polishing them. We tried to select musically representative bits of the various styles we crossed with on that day… So the music on the album is pure ambience, creating a place or a landscape. It may be off the real map in many ways if you like. In the end it depends on the situation and the mood of the listener. If you can give yourself to the music, it opens for you and will take you places. You can create your own map in your own mind, take your bearings and feel your way thru the varied landscapes in Kimmo's paintings… the journey really is more important than the destination. Ami Hassinen63°50'22.2"N 23°08'03.2"E
OFF THE MAP
Ami Hassinen & Joni Virtanen, two protagonists of the legendary Finnish ambient explorers Nemesis, join their creative soundscaping insignias with their fellow drone bass guitar wizard Juha-Matti Rautiainen and ingenious mastermind Kimmo Heikkilä, the illustrator and designer behind all maps and artwork for this project. This quartet of gifted and soulfully connected artists takes us into magnificently evocative territories, no matter if authentic, terra incognita, historical, futuristic or imaginary. Thrillingly immersing and topographically abundant "Off the map" journey fully reveals all its infinite magic during these strange times we are now confronted with. A true oasis indeed, both aural and visual! Richard Gürtler (October 2020) 48°07'35.0"N 17°07'42.7"E
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VISION
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