YKSI – CULTURAL SLAVERY
Text by: Mikko Polus
I had been superficially aware of Jani Hirvonen’s project Uton and quite enjoyed his collaborative CD with Yoshihiro Kikuchi from 2019, but for whatever reason hadn’t looked into his stuff more. Others were much more keen and nimble than me though, as when the artist’s other project Yksi had a tape titled White Magic out on Satatuhatta in late 2022, it sold out in a week. Later on I started seeing more and more compliments of both projects, and decided it’s finally time to give them a go. The first release I managed to obtain was the C40 pro-tape Cultural Slavery that was published by Narcolepsia in August 2023 as an edition of 70 copies. I really like the tape’s tastefully primitivist cover art, and although the rest of the j-card’s graphic design isn’t to my liking, it does fit the audio’s thought-provokingly psychedelic and slightly out-of-place feel.
Those afraid of mellow flanger tones and such things often associated with psychedelia can rest easy though. While describing the tape as psychedelic (harsh) noise would be very fitting, it also reveals barely a flint of what the 40 minutes contain. The album going quite easy on the lower frequencies gives its sound a light and energically burning feel, and this image of a continuous burst of (psychic?) energies is amplified by the rich amount of sound layers and their constant mutation. The highest frequencies never plunge into the depths of ear-damaging harshness, but there are some rougher scrapes that you will feel. Some might even call them lo-fi, but the pairing of such crude noisiness with somewhat softer and cleaner electronic pulses and drones feels very intended instead of being some recording accident.
The difference between the screeches of a chaotically strummed and noisy electric guitar and less easily decipherable electronic screeches and warbles often gets blurred. This doesn’t meant that the tracks would be some dull echoing fog of sound though, but a mass of entangled heterogenic sounds that form a pulsing interconnected web where motion and changes are continuously present. Plain harshness meets wildlife-reminiscent chirps and rougher rumbles coexist with cleaner electronics, continuously on the move yet never at war against itself.
The tape has a 20-minute track on each side, where the latter seems to focus more heavily on electronic squelches and screeches at the cost of the very harshest noises. That makes the sides compliment each other like a natural ying-yang-pairing, where the characteristic “lackings” of one track are balanced by the other.
As I am still getting to know this cassette, I’m still pondering about if I find some passing individual sounds more annoying than purely enjoyable in the end… but I guess that’s part of its charm. It gets your attention and offers perhaps even more than what you wanted, and doesn’t settle for the easiest choices.
Teaser at YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFRpYAclCR8
I noticed that prior to the tapes on Satatuhatta in 2021 and 2022, the works of Yksi had been self-published as editions of 30 or less copies. How did you and Satatuhatta find each other? It seems that I wasn’t the only one who became aware of Yksi through those Satatuhatta tapes, as just a while later you had releases out on Freak Animal, Tribe Tapes and Narcolepsia as well. I’m not sure if these things are connected, but it really seems like a chain reaction at play.
I indeed released that first cassette myself, on my own label, Magma Tones. Satatuhatta-Vilho heard it apparently via Bandcamp and got in touch. We exchanged cassettes and soon he asked me to make a cassette for his label. After the second cassette I was in contact with Narcolepsia myself, and they replied that they would be interested in releasing a Yksi-cassette. Some time after that Mikko from Freak Animal contacted me and asked if I would be interested in doing a CD (and even before that I had already released a song on a FA compilation album), and pretty soon there was an inquiry from Tribe Tapes. Each of these labels are pretty well represented in the noise circles in my opinion, so it’s been relatively easy for people to get access to what I’ve done.
There are some Finnish noise/drone artists that use cosmic and psychedelic elements in their artworks and sound, with Haare being the most obvious example. Even so, psychedelia isn’t what people generally associate with Finnish noise, and such elements are rarely used as extensively as you do with Yksi. Was this ”lack” in the Finnish noise scene a partial reason to why you came to form Yksi, or are these things related at all? I think the same could be asked about the heavy use of guitar on the Cultural Slavery tape, as at least to me it seems guitar noise is not at all popular at the moment.
The lack in the scene was not the reason I started working in my own way, but I think that psychedelia is welcome in this environment. Psychedelic elements are quite inherent in what I’ve been doing in my other projects for years, so I didn’t feel like I had to go out of my way to change it to fit the style or expectations of the scene. I believe that if a thing is done well, it becomes appropriate when it needs to be, and those boundaries of appropriateness stretch or even fade away. If it becomes inappropriate, that’s already a pretty good achievement, especially within the Finnish scene (even if it wouldn’t be something I intented to happen).
Yksi itself started already back in the summer of 2006, but it was just an experiment that lasted for one recording session. However, I reintroduced the name when I started working on a noisier sound again. This re-experimentation with harsher noise came out of an interest in trying to make stuff that didn’t flicker and wonder too much, as can often happen with my Uton project. I wanted to jump into a different frequency, with kind of a rock approach: going all-out and taking a break from everything. To just get crazy about the sound and its intensity, and to experience it through my body and mind as it flows. A really active and powerful energy. Ecstatic and curious, too. Guitar is also an inherent way to make noise for me, as I’ve been making noise with it since I started back in the late 90’s. Guitars make a lot of good sounds and are also very suitable for this kind of more intense music making – and if wanted, it gives also that rock vibe as a bonus 🙂
It seems that you have a very clear vision of what Yksi releases should sound and look like. Have you intentionally set some tight boundaries for the project to operate within, or is it just Yksi’s current form and later on you might make something very different?
With the exception of the first cassette, the albums released on other labels than mine have been compilations of stuff I’ve been working on and gotten at least demo-ready (meaning 90-95% of the mixing is done). The theme for the releases will develop as the songs are selected (in agreement with the label) for the album and I start thinking about the cover artwork. How it develops will depend largely on the things I am thinking about at that time, or what I otherwise find interesting or appropriate to address and present with the sound. So in that sense, I’ve kept a strict limit, at least in the sense that I haven’t gone out to make material that would appeal to the public’s expectations and then chosen a theme that wouldn’t interest or inspire me (I’ve made a few concessions to the labels with a few releases, but nothing radical that would have irritated me later). As for what will happen later, I can’t say for sure, but I think the same will be true for later works as well. Of course, the subject matter itself may change to some extent. Musically, however, Yksi will be dedicated to the harshest kind of noise, and I’ll do the other stuff under other names.
While you’ve had some releases out on established noise labels, you’ve also continued to publish material as self-released micro-editions as well as digitally. I’ve understood you’re trying to move away from online ”easy shopping” platforms like bandcamp though, or have I misunderstood things? Where can people find and obtain these DIY releases?
I make quite a lot, and because I think the material is worth publishing, I sometimes find it necessary to put it out digitally, or as a small edition on cdr or cassette. These diy-versions have so far been a bit different from the releases that came through others’ labels, meaning that while the sound is still harsh, the way of making and implementing it has been a bit different. Not the kind of all-out blast with three or four sound layers simultaneously… so somehow they’re perhaps more experimental. There would be more to release, but I like to maintain some sense of pacing, and even if might go off the rails sometimes it’s not really a bad thing… Except maybe in the sense that the potential audience might get overdosed and lose interest because there’s too much stuff to handle (…but that’s the case with Merzbow too, and it’s not a problem; more likely just a welcome thing). It’s nice, though, to finalize the recordings by releasing them in some form so that it’s possible to move on to the next one (which is surely already waiting; or if not, it must be recorded, hehe). It’s better like that than to leave it lying around and possibly have it end up forgotten. Prolonged dormancy can even cause anxiety.
Easy shopping platforms are of course nice, but for example Bandcamp lost its appeal when they switched to a big company (and then to an even bigger one), and the system started to become more suspicious anyway. Extra costs to be paid for those big companies by both the seller and the buyer, no thanks! I still have the Bandcamp page because it’s very useful for other things, just not for selling. So I only have the free mode in use.
Nowadays I sell few releases through the Ko-fi site with a more moderate indie feel, at least for now – and it’s possible to buy these digital and physical versions by asking via email or through my websites (and not having to pay the dirty brokerage firms’ bonuses). Of course one has to compose a message then, instead of making a few clicks, and now from experience I can say that since I moved away from the easy-click platform it’s been pretty quiet. I promote my releases on a few forums, and on Instagram. I’ve tried to make this easy, not deliberately difficult for people, which means the links should be easy to be found.
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/_uton_etc
Contact YKSI through the contact form of https://uton.bandcamp.com/
Physical tape could be still available from:
https://www.screamandwrithe.com
https://www.nhfastore.net/index.php?route=product/search&search=yksi
