Aleksi Perälä - discussion and playlists

[zazen]

Aleksi Perala gets discussed a lot on the 'New + Upcoming releases' forum (e.g. this thread has 2000+ posts in it) but I think we could do with a thread here on the Music forum where we can talk about his stuff more generally. And maybe post playlists? If ever there was an artist that its worth making playlists for, its Aleksi.

A recap for those who might be new to AP:

Aleksi Perala was originally on Rephlex as Ovuca some 20 odd years ago (e.g. check out Afternoon Girl from 2001 ). Around 2013 Aleksi and Grant Wilson-Claridge came up with "Colundi" which is a set of 128 specially chosen frequencies that make an alternative microtonal tuning/set of scales within which to create music. Since then he's worked exclusively on making music with Colundi and has released a huge amount of it - over 100 albums of material since 2013.

He explains his prolific output in this 2021 interview:

Quote

 

"I make music every day. That’s my routine ... 12 hours a day sometimes. That’s all I do. And I find it’s my thing to do. At least what I should be doing"

"... but an obvious question is: aren’t you afraid that it can be counterproductive to release too much at once?"

"No, not at all, no. Because I don’t think about stuff like that. I never think about stuff like my career or something. I’m not that kind of a person. I’m more like a nature child or whatever. I just do what I’m supposed to do. Or 'what is my place in this universe?' I am just following my calling, it’s natural to me."

"But I mean, aside from the business side of things, aren’t you afraid that some really good tracks are going to get lost in an ocean of other tracks?"

"They already are! (laughs) It’s already too late… No, I don’t mind anymore. It’s like life: we have so many things, humans produce so much already. Where do you draw the line? I am just really enjoying what I do. And I like to share it. Simple as that. Smile with the universe!"

 

So he puts out a lot of music. Often there are some great tracks there, they get released without fanfare or explanation and then he's moving ever forwards and working on the next thing. And the track names are all numerical ids like FI3AC2139340, which makes it hard to remember which is which, and hard to discuss them. I can tell you that FI3AC2039070 is a banger, but thats not much use to you unless I also provide a hyperlink.

And so, WATMM, I think there's some important work to be done here, sifting through everything and sharing recommendations and playlists with each other.

In late 2020 he released a series of 16 Albums/EPs called Midnight Sun, so I'm going to start with that

Midnight Sun

"Midnight Sun was all for Finland, the Finnish nature and the beauty here and the fact that we have something called “midnight sun” up here. At midsummer, you have to go to northern Finland to actually witness the midnight sun. With my wife, we went to see it last summer, it was awesome. I don’t think people realize that very much. I get the impression whenever I’m in Central Europe that people seem to think of Finland as a cold and dark place, which it is in the wintertime, but in summer, it’s the opposite. We have more light than the rest of Europe and it can be very hot up here as well"

Midnight Sun and some of the series that come after it have a lot of tabla-style sounds and rhythms. I found this explanation attached to a grant that a Finnish Lift company awarded to Aleksi:

"In this project I plan to use Colundi Frequencies to model physical instruments and materials. First, I analyze the sound I've chosen using Fourier analysis, a visual equalizer and my tuning ear. I calculate the ratios of the sine waves in the sound and their averages. Then I digitally build the sound of my chosen instrument part by part using colundi frequencies based on my tuning systems. I have found that the sounds of indigenous percussion instruments are best suited for this, as their upper notes are not harmonic in the usual way"

The whole of Midnight Sun is 134 tracks lasting 13 hours, I spent a few weeks listening to it and made this playlist of my favourites. Its 30 songs, 2h52m, you can think of it perhaps as a long double album. I've kept the original ordering and included at least one track from each of the 16 releases:

 

Edited April 25 by zazen

[toaoaoad]

"GAIA 11" is incredibly good, from start to finish. Can't say much for the rest of them.

 

Edited April 25 by toaoaoad
added embed

[Wunderbar]

these are peacful

[chenGOD]

It's so mental to me that he got a grant from a Finnish Elevator company to fuck around with FFT transforms.

Anyways, colundi everyone!

 

[auxien]

would be a good case for an artist sub forum… .  .  .   .    .    .

 

Spoiler

so i can mute it 

 

[dr lopez]

 

 

remember this sick track?

[chenGOD]

So you can make playlists on Bandcamp but not share them...I made a playlist called Colundi Every1 with the first track from every Aleksi album in my bandcamp collection (which is pretty fucking far from all of the music he's released) and it ended up being 53 tracks and almost 5 hours lol.

13 hours ago, dr lopez said:

 

 

remember this sick track?

Fantastic track and album Mental Union 2 is so lush.

[cichlisuite]

i know some of you might not like this, but i love Alithia, Sunshine and Gaia albums for creative work