JOHN FOXX official website METAMATIC : Connections : Jori Hulkkonen : Interview

In a Metamatic Website exclusive, Jori Hulkkonen talks to Rob Harris about his career to date, the reasons for all of his pseudonyms, his many and varied collaborations and why he loves vinyl so much.

Also discussed is Jori's forthcoming album Errare Machinale Est which features the single Never Been Here Before where, once again, he teams up with John Foxx...

Rob Harris: Which do you prefer - the studio or playing live / DJ-ing?

Jori Hulkkonen: There's no competition really. Sitting in the studio and making new music is the number one priority as well as the reason why I do everything else. Gigs are fun, but the travelling is quite tiring, and it takes a lot of time and energy away from potential studio time. But I do like the balance you can at least theoretically have with studio work and travelling.

Rob Harris: How do you choose people to remix your music?

Jori Hulkkonen: Usually I decide the remixers together with the label. I'm very sensitive in letting other people touch my music, so I try to get remixers whose work I really appreciate or who are good friends - very often both. I'm not very experimental in that sense.

Rob Harris: How much involvement do you have with the remixers?

Jori Hulkkonen: Remixing is tricky business...

As a remixer myself, I don't really like people telling me what they want me to do. If they've asked me in the first place they should trust what I do. Obviously they can tell me if they are expecting something for the dancefloor (which usually is the reason for remixes anyways), or just some new interpretation, but that should be before I take the job. So I try to do the same thing when getting my music remixed: when I've made up my mind who's up for the job I then leave it totally up to them to do as they feel is best.

Rob Harris: Why have you decided to release music under so many different guises - Zyntherius, Eternal Boyman, Bobby Forrester, Discemi, Boys on Tape, Jii Hoo and Fenno-Baron.

Jori Hulkkonen: When I signed my first album deal with F Communications back in '96 it was for a 'Jori Hulkkonen' album and we just agreed that I would have the freedom to release on other labels, but not as Jori, rather than with some pseudonym. I did seriously think about getting some stage name to replace Jori too, but I'm kind of glad now I didn't. And during the years it sort of got to the point that everytime I ended up doing a slightly different sounding music that wasn't gonna be on any album I would simply offer it to some new label and come up with a new pseudonym.

The stuff released as Jori Hulkkonen, that's the important stuff. These are the records - mainly albums - I work on months and months. If you listen to the 'Jori' albums, there's a certain consistency there; themes if you like, and you can hear the progression stylistically, production-wise, musically, lyrically. It's really the arc I'm creating as an artist. The Jori albums are my life's work.

The pseudonyms are sometimes ahead of their time compared to Jori, or sometimes they release stuff that could never be on a Jori album. Basically the pseudonyms release music that Jori then DJs, and Jori makes records mainly meant for you to listen at home to.

Rob Harris: Please describe the areas explored by each of your alter-egos?

Jori Hulkkonen: The thing that combines all the pseudonyms is that they all release music meant for DJs rather than home listening. In effect, Jori records I try to sound more timeless, where as the pseudonyms may be very very 'now'. Stylistically many of the pseudonyms may be very similar, such as The Step Time Orchestra and Junko '73 in the late 90's, which both are collaborations with Tuomas Salmela. The reason for this was that we didn't want to have too many Step Time Orchestra records out at the same time.

Also, many of the pseudonyms release only one record, like Zyntherius, Fancy Robots or Afrobaltic Sound Kimara. Most likely what you will find on these records is some sort of novelty idea that on an album would wear very thin quite quickly but as a DJ 'tool' they do the trick. There's really no logic how it works which is why I like it. In some ways I think that Jori cannot be held responsible for the actions of the pseudonyms, which probably doesn't sound all that healthy.

Rob Harris: One of your pseudonyms (Fenno-Baron) has had a great deal of success with Crowd Get Ready To Be Jammed - how have you viewed its success?

Jori Hulkkonen: Having a popular record among the DJs is always nice; these are my peers so it's always nice to get appreciated among colleagues.

The Fenno-Baron releases were done during the same sessions as my new album, and apart from a couple of tracks it's a very non-dancefloor album (but it's still quite intense).

The idea was to create a pseudonym that would release only extremely dancefloor efficient tracks, so that I wouldn't feel any pressure to go into that direction on the album any more than I felt would be natural.

Rob Harris: Please tell us about Processory and your relationship with Jerry Valuri.

Jori Hulkkonen: Jerry used to DJ and do parties back in the 90's in the west coast of Finland, and when I was starting my career as a DJ I played for some parties for him and that's how I got to know him. We did keep in touch during the years but it was actually only when we both found ourselves living in Turku in 2004 did we think about collaborating. The thing is he'd never written songs before; he'd done some experimenting with his synths, tr-808 and so on but he never had actually done any vocals.

We have very similar taste in music and one day I just phoned him up to come by and see if he could come up with a vocal idea for a track I had done and I knew that with a cool vocal it could be really something special. So I left him in my studio for about an hour and when I came back he had recorded the vocals for what became Lo-Fiction on my 2005 album Dualizm.

Processory was then us taking the ideas introduced on Lo-Fiction further. Also, for a long time I had wanted to write songs with a guitar rather than synths, so I thought this was the right time for that as well.

We're very happy with the way the album turned out, but because we decided very early on that we wouldn't play any gigs it made promoting the album a bit difficult. In this pop genre people expect to see the albums performed live as well. Personally I've always felt why ruin a good album you've spent months perfecting it in the studio by playing out live, as it is always a compromise. And because neither of us are really musicians there was a potential disaster lurking there. So we decided we rather keep our self esteem than try to rock it out.

Rob Harris: How are you enjoying your new studio - alppIVhouz?

Jori Hulkkonen: Yes it's the first time I have a proper studio, as opposed to a homestudio. It's very cool having a sound proof working space with enough room to accommodate my 12,000 plus vinyl collection and all the vintage equipment. Having had everything around me all the time for the past twenty years, it is sometimes a bit weird not being able to make music at home though.

Rob Harris: Which of your records has given you the most satisfaction - and why?

Jori Hulkkonen: It's not really any record, or even a single track that gives me the satisfaction. It's the process of making music and especially the bit when the pieces fall into place; when you find that chord that works perfectly with the bassline, an overdub that complements the backing track, come up with a witty lyric that ties the mood of the song together, it can be anything... but that's really the thing that's most rewarding.

Rob Harris: Which of your records do you feel most completely encapsulates / best represents 'Jori Hulkkonen' - and why?

Jori Hulkkonen: Definitely Dualizm, and the new album coming out now, Errare Machinale Est. I think it's just the way I've managed to combine so many aspects of my musical backround and inspiration in a fashion that sounds logical and original.

The previous albums have been more or less compilations of tracks, where as on these two all the tracks were custom made for the album.

I don't really listen to my own records, but if I would I'd love these two albums!

Rob Harris: What music do you listen to? Who's on your current / all-time play-list?

Jori Hulkkonen: The DJ stuff I didn't include here. My current fave albums...

John Maus (Love is Real) (the best album of 2007, no doubt), Via Tania (Moon Sweet Moon), David Shrigley's Worried Noodles compilation and Raz O'Hara & The Odd Orchestra (Raz O'Hara & The Odd Orchestra).

Some of my all-time fave albums, slightly more predictable...

Pet Shop Boys (Behaviour), Karlheinz Stockhausen (Gesang der Jünglinge), John Foxx (Metamatic), The Smiths (Strangeways Here We Come), Depeche Mode (Some Great Reward) and Kraftwerk (Computer World).

Rob Harris: Who has influenced you the most?

Jori Hulkkonen: Tough... but I guess as a producer it has to be Carl Craig. He wasn't an inspiration when I started, I was more inspired by the stuff of the 80's (well it was 1988) like the Pet Shop Boys or Depeche Mode, and a lot of the new techno and house around the time. But if I had to pick one it'd be Carl Craig as a lot of his work, tracks such as At Les or his Paperclip People alias Climax really made me change the way I think about what club music can be. And he's been very consistent all through his career.

Rob Harris: Please tell us about the other people (Nick Triani, Tiga and José González) who you collaborated with on the Dualizm album?

Jori Hulkkonen: Nick Triani is an English-Italian singer/songwriter/producer who's lived in Finland a few years now and I liked one of his early bands, Supermodel. We just had some mutual friends and I asked if he'd be willing to try to do a vocal for me back in 2001. We did All I See is Shadows, and ever since then on every album I've done there's been a track with him on vocals. I really like his voice. It's very versatile. Somehow he sounds how I imagine I would sound if I could sing.

Tiga I've known for about a decade. He runs a label called Turbo from Montreal and I did a mix CD for them called Helsinki Mix Sessions in 2000. That very same year I was promoting the album in Canada and one day we had nothing to do so we ended up in Tiga's studio and recorded a few coverversions to pass the time.

One of those cover versions, Sunglasses at Night, ended up on DJ Hell's International Deejay Gigolo label and became a top twenty hit. Tiga had never released a record in his life before that. We started working on a follow up and an album but soon realized maybe it's a lot cooler to keep Tiga & Zyntherius as a one hit wonder. So Tiga started to work on a solo-album with producers like Jesper Dahlbäck and Soulwax and I continued my own career. Some of the tracks we intended for the TZ album we did finish, like Dying in Beauty, and Highschool on Tiga's album. we did recently write a bunch of new songs meant for Tiga's second album.

José González I heard on MTV back in 2003 and immediately fell in love with his first scandinavian single Crosses. Infact, I made a bootleg remix of the track so that I could include it in my DJ sets. I was so happy with the remix that I sent the mp3 to his record label. Fortunately they were as excited with my mix as I was, and also José loved it so they decided to release it officially. Then when José came to Finland to tour in early 2004 I just asked if he was up for a recording some stuff with me prior to his gig, and he was very happy to return the remix favour.

Rob Harris: How did your collaboration with John (on Dislocated) come about?

Jori Hulkkonen: When John released his Crash and Burn album he did with Louis Gordon, John's manager Steve Malins was sending the record out to some DJs and producers, and if my memory serves me correctly, it was my Canadian friend DJ/artist Tiga who told Steve that he really should get in touch with me. Which he then did.

Rob Harris: Did you write Dislocated with John in mind?

Jori Hulkkonen: Yes. Musically, bits of it are actually based on a track called White Leather which was more or less a Metamatic style pastiche intended for Tiga's album Sexor. Incidentally the same time the opportunity to be in touch with John opened up, and Tiga anyways wanted to take his album to a more 'commercial' direction (personally I would've liked to see that album sounding a bit like Metamatic).

So I basically took the whatever musical ideas I had there (bassline and the beats) and started writing a new track on top of it - with John especially in mind.

Rob Harris: What was the extent of the collaboration on Dislocated?

Jori Hulkkonen: In the record sleeve it says 'featuring' rather than 'with' and I think it says it all. I wrote the song and recorded demo vocals which I then sent to John. He re-sang it, slightly rephrasing and changing a few words here and there, sent me the vocal and then I mixed the track.

Rob Harris: I assume that you've been a fan of Johns for a while - what is it about his music that you like?

Jori Hulkkonen: In the 80's I was very interested in the new electronic music. It just sounded so different than anything else that was out there - especially in Finland which is a very conservative, good old rock'n'roll country.

And I remember coming across Metamatic and for me it was just the most futuristic sounding music ever. The actual soundscape with its minimalistic approach, mixed with John's unique voice and lyrics that really blew my mind at the time. It was all very abstract and exciting. And to this day it remains to me so far ahead of its time - even if released today it'd be ahead of it's time.

It was only later I became familiar with his other work, such as the stuff he did with Ultravox and later solo stuff which I also love.

Rob Harris: Was the decision to collaborate with John again an easy one?

Jori Hulkkonen: Initially I thought we did such a good job with Dislocated that when I started to work on the new album I didn't plan to work with him, as my thought was we couldn't top Dislocated. But as I kept working on the new material there were quite a few moments when I thought 'well this could be great with John's voice'. And in the end I thought it would actually be quite stupid NOT to collaborate again if he still was up for it - and he was. It's not often you get to work with people who've influenced your career choice in the first place.

Rob Harris: The track Never Been Here Before is very different to Dislocated - was it a conscious decision to write something so different?

Jori Hulkkonen: Finnish architect/designer Alvar Aalto's classic vase is a celebrated item in Finnish design. In 2006 the vase had its 70th anniversary and I was asked to write a piece of music for limited edition CD to be handed out at the official celebration where I was also DJ-ing. What I ended up doing was drawing the shape of the vase on a graphic sequencer and the piano and the counteracting synthbassline actually come from this.

When I'm working on an album I always go back to see what unused ideas I have around, and came across this and started to build up the theme and then I sent it to John to get his opinion.

So this time it was definitely more of a traditional collaboration; John wrote the lyrics and vocals, recorded them and sent me the files and then I finished the track.

I don't think it was that conscious to make a different sounding song, but obviously Dislocated was based on Metamatic-style ideas, an hommage from my part to it if you will. And Never Been Here Before was not.

Rob Harris: I'm really interested in your loyalty to vinyl, and your reluctance / refusal to automatically release material on CD. What are your thoughts / reasons behind this?

Jori Hulkkonen: I make music, not records. The actual format is always secondary to me, but a few things about CD bother me.

First of all, I've always seen CD just as a phase, the first step in all music being consumed digitally. And as more and more people have access to the net I think CD has run its course.

Also, I think CD is not very ecological. In addition to manufacturing them, keep in mind that nearly not all of them are sold. Every year thousands and thousands of unsold CDs are being destroyed by record companies who get them back as returns from shops and distributors. The cheapest way for the labels to get rid of them is just to run them over and dump them. So not doing a CD is statement of sorts.

Also, CDs don't really last that long. You scratch a CD and it's useless. Even if treated and stored well the CD has an expected lifespan of around thirty years.

Vinyl on the other hand - and this we know from experience - seems to last at least a century. If you scratch a vinyl it'll crack and pop when you play it but you still will be able to listen to it. Personally I do like getting something concrete when I buy a record, so I like doing a limited edition vinyl for collectors such as myself. In terms of artwork you just can't compare CD to it - and that really is the only extra value brought on by buying a hard copy. You can always burn a CD from your files, anyways.

Rob Harris: Please tell us about your future plans?

Jori Hulkkonen: Well there's the new album Errare Machinale Est now in March 2008 (note: the Finnish distributor wanted to do a limited edition CD for the Finnish market only... and I agreed, so for all those who wanted a CD they can actually get one now. It'll have all the infos, track titles etc in Finnish - collectors will love it).

Also, I'm working on a Fenno-Baron album... it'll be very much a DJ-oriented affair.

Then there are plenty of projects going on, my radio show, remixes, productions, collaborations, exploring new ways of marketing music... see YouTube for example. As an independent artist in today's environment where it's becoming increasingly difficult to make a living with music I think it's imperative to be innovative not only musically but also in terms of how you present yourself and your music.

Rob Harris: Thank you very much for your time.

For more information on Jori Hulkonnen - check out his website...