Lauri Jarviletho - Hey Kid
Interview
1. Cru cru, what first got you into music?
I was hospitalized when I was around 12 years old. My grandparents got me a Synthesizer Greatest cassette to listen to in the hospital. It really clicked. I started spending time at the music studio at the Conservatory of Oulu and learning synthesis and studio techniques when I was around 13. I spent practically all the evenings in the studio.
Eventually after my parents complained about it so much that my grandparents got me a Yamaha SY99 synth when I was 14. Now I could spend a little more time at home – and I spent so much time with that synth that I almost got expelled from school.
I still have that synth in my studio. Getting the instrument at 14 was really when everything clicked and I decided to pursue a life of a professional musician. I did work end up working as a professional musician, composer and producer thru 1997–2007.
2. What or who is your inspiration to create music?
For several years now, the sort of top three for my music inspiration has been David Bowie, Leoard Cohen and Bob Dylan. In my professional years I listened to a lot of more electronic music. Artists like Air, Röyksopp, Daft Punk and Björk were what listened to the most as well as more experimental pop rock like Peter Gabriel. In my earliest years, by far the biggest influences were Jean-Michel Jarre and Vangelis.
I guess I have my roots in electronic and synth music, but for the last decade or so have gravitated more towards a singer-songwriter meets a more rock type of sound. Lately I've listened to a lot of bands like Van Halen, ZZ Top and Bruce Springsteen, which I guess you can hear a lot of influence of especially in the latest single "Hey Kid".
Out of the more contemporary artists, the ones I tend to gravitate to most are St. Vincent, as well as the latest from The Weeknd, Taylor Swift and Harry Styles. I think especially the Taylor Swift / Jack Antonoff co-writing is magical, whereas I do still struggle with getting my head around the earlier more straight arrow mainstream pop stuff produced by Max Martin etc.
Most recently, I've listened to a lot of The Beatles. I never got the band before, but last year something clicked and I really understood what they're all about. I went on to listen to their entire production catalog, singles and all. I have now about a half a dozen of their albums in heavy rotation as vinyls. I'm really happy I finally got it – only took me some 46 years though.
3. How do you feel the internet has impacted the music business?
I think it has been divisive.
On one hand, it has made making a living with music a lot harder. Back when I was working professionally, it wasn't that hard to make money from producing albums or making music for TV and commercials. Now when anybody can create pretty professional sound with only a laptop, the rationale for running a large music studio is very hard to come by.
On the other hand, the internet has opened up a huge opportunity for indie artists, and in terms of reaching new audiences it's magical. Back in my professional years, the idea of having people listen to a Finnish artist's music outside of Europe was basically impossible. Now I'm seeing people from all over the world listen to the stuff I write, which I think is fantastic.
I used to dream about this "global village of music", where you wouldn't need to drum up a local fan base, but where you could have a handful of fans here and there, all over the world. I think that's now become reality to quite a few artists.
Business-wise, though, I don't know. Music has never been an easy thing to navigate as a business, and it's definitely become harder now. That will push some more professionally trained people out of the industry, but then again, will open doors for people who never could've made it twenty years ago due to all the gatekeeping.
So there's pros and there's cons.
It's divisive.
4. Will you tell us something embarassing about you?
Oh boy, where to start.
I used to work with this rap band in the early 2000s and I produced one of their albums. I also played keyboards on their tour at first. I started behaving really badly during that tour, thinking I was kind of the king of the world working with those guys (they were actual celebrities in Finland), even though I was just a part of their lineup. I remember one particular time when we had a gig at a pretty prestigious place in Helsinki and one of the guys asked me to get a mic cable for him and I just snapped "get it yourself", going to get another beer from the backstage fridge.
They eventually fired me from the tour lineup, and I think with good reason too. Experiences like this are a part of why I wanted to write "Hey Kid" in the first place; I got a bit of success at a fairly young age and it sort of screwed up my head, bringing out this monster in me.
I'm not really great at letting go of the past, so many of these things still sort of cling on to me. Luckily there's music to help deal with it.
5. How is your perfect day?
I wake up around ten am and take a slow morning, drinking some coffeee and enjoying the sunshine, getting to work maybe around 11. I spend a few hours in the studio, either doodling with new ideas or producing more advanced stuff, depending on which part of the production cycle I happen to be on.
Then I do some writing, either for my blog, social media or if I have a book project ongoing, then that. Maybe a meeting or two, although I try to make sure I don't get my calendar too crammed up. Maybe in the afternoon I'll go out and give a talk which I do a few times a week, or go teach a class at the University. In the evening, when the kids come home, we'll have some dinner and then play some video games like FC24 together.
I'll dig out a record from my vinyl collection and listen to it start to end. Then we'll maybe watch an episode of Doctor Who with the kids or some drama show like Downton Abbey with my wife. After the kids have gone to sleep, I'll do some reading (I typically have about 5–10 books with me at all times, even when traveling) and listen to some music for a few hours. If there's inspiration, maybe go back to studio to work a bit – midnight sessions tend to be very productive even if I don't really have that many of them these days. I'd go to sleep around one or two in the morning.
Most days don't really look like this, as I have a lot of errands to run with my day job, a lot of teaching and speaking appointments and many evenings I actually just drive my five kids around Espoo to their hobbies. Also, the "normal" daily rhythm of the society means I often have to squeeze myself up and running already around 7am or 8am, which has never really worked for me. I also travel a lot for my work, so I often try to squeeze some of the activities above in a hectic travel schedule. Some of the music on the new album was actually written on an airplane with this mini studio I haul around the world with me.
But for a perfect day, yeah, it would look something like the above. (Humming to Lou Reed now.)
6. What memorable responses have you had to your work so far?
Back when my first album Twilight Cinema came out in 1999, an old lady called one of the radio stations playing music from the album and said, it was the most beautiful thing they'd ever heard. I think you can't get any better feedback than that.
Another thing I'll never forget is doing this tour with this short-lived techno band I had in the 2000s around Finland, playing to crowds of 5000–10000 teenagers warming up for more famous artists. Having 10000 teenagers shout "take off your shirt" was kind of embarrassing and fun at the same time.
My 2012 Songsworth album Launchland got some great reviews, like five stars out of five, which was in particularly interesting as I basically wrote and produced the whole thing in eight days. One of the most exciting things about that album was also that through a long line of coincidences, one of my all time favorite sci-fi authors, Alastair Reynolds, gave the permission to use his painting as the album cover. Given that many of the tracks on that album were inspired by his books, it was an amazing moment to get that email from him giving the green light.
As for the more recent music, I was overwhelmed about the positive response to my first single from the upcoming album, Typhoon. I've gotten a huge amount of great feedback from people who really seem to connect with the track, so I think there's something cool going on here.
7. Do you see yourself as a music nerd?
Absolutely.
It's funny, but in my twenties I was horrified about the idea of people thinking of me as a nerd. (Thanks, school, I guess.) One of the guys in the above mentioned rap band even called my Twilight Cinema "nerd music", and I tried for years to steer clear of that.
But I'm a nerd. I love synthesizers, computers, math, programming, analyzing, poetry and writing – and of course philosophy, which I have my degree in. People in the music industry used to tell me I think too much; that's why I ended up eventually studying philosophy. I figured, that's at least a field where "thinking too much" should be impossible.
It took me a long to come around this, but around 2010 when I started releasing music under the Songsworth pseudonym was when I think I finally accepted being what I am.
8. What album do you replay the most?
In the last year or so, the album I've listened to the most is probably Abbey Road by The Beatles. Other heavy rotation albums include Blackstar by David Bowie, You Want It Darker by Leaonard Cohen, Rough and Rowdy Ways by Bob Dylan and Midnights by Taylor Swift.
Out of the most listened to albums of all time, I think Black Tie White Noise by David Bowie probably comes out on top.
9. What's your favorite movie?
Star Wars.
10. Do you agree with the Pigeon?
Hmm, well okay then. :)
Discovered via http://musosoup.com
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