Aki Himanen & Aleksi Kinnunen

Aki Himanen and Aleksi Kinnunen are finnish musicians who both have a strong background in jazz and electronic music. For years they’ve been exploring the boundaries where machines and organic instruments can create a real dialogue. Their first full-length album, Scapes I, was a dark experimental record inspired by generative music techniques and collective improvisation with trumpet, drums and machines. Now the duo is releasing more straightforward and dance-oriented EP, Dawn Drops, which combines techno and jazz music in a sophisticated manner. There’s lots of influences from Nordic jazz, but rhythmically the EP owes more to the African based jazz grooves. Synthesizers, drum machines, lyrical trumpet melodies and organic jazzy beats together form a hypnotic blend full of mental images. The music is dark but hopeful, moody and organic. It’s very visual and reminds of futuristic Scandinavian landscapes where the nature and technology are smoothly melting together. Dawn Drops EP is like a peaceful but suspenseful nightly car drive somewhere between the futuristic mountains where dawn is setting and darkness fades away in a slow and beautiful way