Ruoste

by Kadonneet maat from Helsinki, Suomi

Ambient Techno

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I have created and performed underground dance music for over 20 years. A few years ago I realized that I need a new creative outlet and a bit of distance to the past, so I started a new more atmospheric project called Kadonneet maat, which translates as “Lost lands”.

I’m also a professional craftsman, and I have created many acoustic instruments of my own design over the years. I used them a lot either as such, or as raw material for sound design. I also created a set of modular synths and effects of my own design before and while writing the album. Utilising the same set of effects on all tracks I hoped to give them album an unified and original sound that can’t be traced to any existing plugin or synthesizer.

New ideas grow when there’s space for them. I wrote the album over a time period of three years while I lived outside the city next to a national park and conserved forests. I happened to be in a life situation where it was possible to concentrate on music and sound almost full-time. I ventured into the woods just to listen to the sounds of nature and let my thought processes flow free almost every day.

I made lots of experiments and since I had unusually generous amounts of time on my disposal, I could explore all kinds of dead ends which didn’t necessarily result in new music, but were revealing learning experiences. This was most liberating. While I was actively gigging, there was always the next festival or party coming up, creating a pressure to do “just one more” track in my routinely style before finding time for creative experiments. Time, which never materialised in the end.

So this album is a celebration of leisurely creativity and a craftsman ethic, and my take on where the mankind is coming from and where we might be headed to in the future. I am also an environmental sciences major, and I have been thinking a lot about how to communicate ecological thinking indirectly.

Soft beats and romantic visions for the post-anthropocene!