Rhytual. The audible part of a long practice.

Rhytual is the imprint where I release my own music. A long-term project, with no schedule, and no specific genre. A platform to focus and clarify my art and craft.

Rhytual didn't begin as a plan. It began as a pull. Something I've been moving toward most of my life without quite understanding what it was. Until I did

1999. I was in army on guard duty in the forest. Just me and my thoughts. A sound in my head. Cold, relentless, melancholic. I didn't know how to make it yet. But the feeling kept pulling me back. Who was I as an artist? Where was this coming from? How would I give it form?

It took over twenty years. I wasn't ready as a person. A good place in life had to come first, before a good place in the music was possible.

For me, making music is closer to a spiritual practice than a craft. Connecting with something sacred. Creativity is not a trait we possess or lack. It belongs to something larger that moves through us when we get out of the way. Rhytual is the part of that practice you can hear.

The Rhytual platform is part of it. Putting music out forces decisions that thinking about music doesn't. It's how I get out of my own way and let the work be what it is, not what I wish it was. The work doesn't come from me. I set the conditions and let it through.

The work happens in a state of immersion. Hours pass without me noticing. That's where the best music comes from. Everything else is about getting there and staying there.

The music isn't sparse for its own sake. It's a metaphor for focusing on what's important, leaving room for the listener, and for the things that don't speak loudly.

I came up in drum and bass. Thirty years of making electronic music, with releases on Metalheadz, Exit, R&S, Reinforced, Over/Shadow, 31 Records, Dispatch, Repertoire, Straight Up Breakbeat, and many more. Rhytual is connected to that history but isn't bound by it. The music here moves across the spectrum, from breakbeat to techno to slower territory. What ties it together is the process and the intention behind it.

My father built traditional Finnish instruments. I grew up playing kantele and jouhikko. I'm currently exploring what these instruments can do inside electronic production.

There's a quality in Finnish music I'd call positive melancholy. Not sadness exactly. Something ancient. It's been part of the psyche here for a long time and I'm comfortable carrying it forward.