Auvinen — Akkosaari

California based Johannes Auvinen is an electronic musician who began his career under the Tin man alias in the early 2000s, releasing acid and house music.  His new album, released under his last name Auvinen, is a largely beatless gothic-tinged ambient work entitled Akkosaari.

In some ways, it is the kind of ambient music one might expect from a producer of dance-oriented styles, with some traces of structure and tempo to be found.  This is not a bad thing but means the music is perhaps closer to downtempo than pure ambient, with chord progressions evident if one is patient enough to absorb their slow evolution, and occasional sparse beats.  The music is based around repetition, a soft, cyclical murmuring not unlike Biosphere, another producer who began in the world of ambient house.  The closest other comparison is the haunted atmospherics of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2, the slowest and most abstract music in the AFX catalogue.

It is the choir pads that lend this album it's gothic feeling, paired with its patient, reflective and solitary tone.  Auvinen has captured the emotionally uncertain, melancholic artfulness of melodic ambient from the Cyclic Law and Cold Meat Industry labels, spearheaded by artists like Raison D'etre.  Pieces like "Susi" are cinematic in the yearning beauty of their unresolved chords and lushly textured drones.  Warm, deep and sustained saw wave bass tones lend a physical and emotional weight to the tonal shifts.

Unabashedly modern, clean digital sound is utilized to create a highly emotional and visual space.  The environment is complete and cohesive.  The clear tonalities of the pads drive the central emotional ideas, while wisps of noise and air circulate around them, filling out the three-dimensional perception of the music.  Careful processing has fashioned a sparkling clear sound image that feels as wide and vast as a mountain vista.

The fluid, well-considered composition of this album is like a well balanced, concise poem.  I feel I have absorbed its creator's many fears, daydreams and moments spent enjoying everyday activities.  It has a patient perfectionism which speaks to hours spend listening and readjusting the sounds into perfect balance.  Truly, the concept of minimalism finds perhaps its greatest expression in this world of electronica, which allows such exact construction of each individual timbre down to its tiniest building blocks.  As such, one can use only a couple of elements with full confidence that they were designed with utmost care.

When we leave the rainy, brooding sphere for a moment, we seem to enter a glistening upper atmosphere.  Pieces like the titular "Akkosaari" are high-speed flights through cloud environs, breathtakingly bright and filled again with melodic tones that seem perfectly to capture a feeling, almost heartbreaking in their earnestness, and acknowledgement of both joy and suffering, and the inevitability of both.

I would recommend this album to any casual listener of downtempo or ambient, as its colourful melodic clarity makes it immediately appealing, even if some of the emotional content is heavy, with deep introspective pondering of difficult questions.  It is a skilful fusion of the world of early 90's downtempo and the mournful cinematic ambiences of the gothic world.  The clear-headed, skillfully told narrative of this album is a rare thing, the careful blending of the melodic and the purely textural abstract.