As we kick 2024 out the door and welcome 2025 with open arms, join us for a series of interviews with artists who’ve braved the year’s riffs, breakdowns, and questionable soundchecks. We’re diving into their triumphs, challenges, and everything that kept the music industry alive and kicking. We sat down with indie artist Lauri Järvilehto to hear how he experienced 2024.
Hi there! Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions. This is a recap of 2024, so what can you tell us about what you’ve had up your sleeves musically in 2024?
For most of this year, I’ve focused on putting the final touches on “Songs About Sadness” and preparing for the release of the album. I’ve worked especially on the final tracks of the album, such as “Typhoon,” “Moomin Weather,” “The Days We Forget,” and “My Little Butterfly,” mixed the album and delivered it for mastering. In the last few months, I’ve spent most of my time promoting the album, creating content for social media, and making video materials, such as the music video for “Typhoon.“
At the same time, as this music was already finished around the summer and mastered in September, I’ve started to explore some new avenues for new songs. There are a few interesting gravitation points for my new songs, especially the acoustic guitar and (yeah!) the accordion. I haven’t played the latter in more than ten years but recently got myself a nice Hohner, and it’s really clicked with the new songs. I mean, if Mark Bell could make it work for BJÖRK, why not?
Another stranger turn of events that I’m still trying to wrap my head around is that while my sound has been consistently evolving into this organic meets synth style prominent in “Songs About Sadness,” inspired by producers like Jack Antonoff and Kid Harpoon, I got recently bitten pretty hard by a hyperpop bug. So right now, in addition to working on promoting “Songs About Sadness,” I’m trying to figure out what kind of a sound would it make to combine this Leonard Cohen/Bob Dylan style acoustic guitar and BJÖRK-inspired accordion with AG Cook style amped up hyperpop beats and synths. I guess it sounds weird, but it’s a rather interesting rabbit hole to inhabit for the time being…
You recently released an album, “Songs about Sadness,” did you spend most of 2024 working on it?
Most of the songs were actually already completed in 2023 and I worked only on a few tracks this year to round up the album. I recorded the vocals with my daughter on “The Days We Forget and My Little Butterfly” and mixed most of the songs in the spring. After that, it’s mostly been some touch-ups. In the fall I worked with this amazing mastering engineer Christian Wright from Abbey Road to put the finishing touches on the album. I’ve worked with a lot of great mastering engineers, but I’ve never felt anyone else gets what I’m gunning for in my music as well as he does.
Meanwhile, I’ve been programming a lot of new sounds, figuring out new types of beats and sounds on the drums and drum machines, and figuring out some pretty cool stuff on the guitar and the accordion.
What would you say, other than having released the album were some of your highlights of 2024?
I had a blast working on the music video and promotion of the first single “Typhoon.” In my ”day job” as a Professor of Practice at Aalto University, I’ve been researching generative AI and human thinking for the last couple of years; there’s a book coming out on the topic in January. It was fun using some AI video generation tools like Luma Labs Dream Machine and Power Director to create the material for the video.
It’s been particularly interesting, though, that in my music I’ve actually gravitated in the exact opposite direction. Every single sound on “Songs About Sadness” has been hand-crafted and played by me, to a great extent on organic instruments and vintage synths. No AI has been used for the music (well, unless you count the amazing Finnish Oeksound Soothe resonance suppressor plugin which I think employs some degree of machine learning). The same trend seems to be continuing with the stuff I’m working on now. I just enjoy creating the sounds from the ground up, whether they be vintage synth patches or figuring out the right mic choice and setup for drums or guitar or voice, and it would be kind of weird to outsource all that fun to a machine.
Some other highlights for 2024 have definitely been that the singles as well as the album have so far received really positive and insightful reviews, which is of course quite uplifting. I think if the listeners can experience even a fraction of what I did when crafting these songs, that would be wonderful.
Have you (re-)discovered any music that you want to share with our readers?
For “Songs About Sadness,” the biggest musical breakthrough for me was finally figuring out THE BEATLES. For most of my life, I’ve struggled with understanding why people like the band. But about 18 months ago the penny dropped after watching the Peter Jackson documentary. I’m eternally grateful for finally figuring that one out. After realizing what makes the band so great, I listened through their entire catalog, singles, and all. Now that I think I finally get it, I would go as far as to say that the band never made a bad song.
In recent months, though, I really hit a kind of a curveball with hyperpop; especially Charli XCX and AG Cook. Given that my all-time top three in music are David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, and Bob Dylan and that lately I’ve been listening to a lot of classic rock in addition to THE BEATLES, I definitely didn’t see that coming.
For a few years now, I’ve been strongly gravitating towards this retro-futuristic sound combining organic elements like drums, guitar, and bass with vintage synths and drum machines, kind of like the most recent works from artists like THE BLEACHERS, St. Vincent, Taylor Swift, or Harry Styles—the first three of which, incidentally have been produced by the same New York genius Jack Antonoff. I had been diving deeper into this type of sound and if you would’ve asked me three months ago, I would’ve said the next album is going to have very minimalistic songs, maybe even with just a guitar, voice, and some minimal rhythm. Maybe like Bob Dylan meets Leonard Cohen by the campfire, with a Latvian Perkons drum machine hiding in the bush.
But for about a month now I’ve been feeling just like the proverbial kid in the candy store when working in the studio, programming supersaw stacks, wavetable sweeps, and sub-bass basslines, combining that with the more organic stuff. And it’s weird. But I guess in a sort of a good way.
So yeah, “Brat” by Charli XCX has definitely been the album of the year for me in 2024, and after getting pulled in by it, I’ve been systematically listening through her catalog, as well as her main producer AG Cook’s, trying to understand what makes this type of music work. Let’s see where all this leads.
What do you have coming up in 2025?
There’s already a lot of new music on the table, and unless something very surprising happens, I’ll probably put some of that stuff out already sometime next year. Meanwhile, we’ll also be working more with promoting “Songs About Sadness.” I’m somewhat hopeful, for example, that I could get down to do some live performances around these songs as well next year. A lot of interesting stuff in the works. We’ll see where all this leads next. Music is just such a marvelous force of nature. You just follow the breadcrumbs wherever they may lead next. Sometimes to very surprising places. Thanks for the interview!
Interview by Laureline Tilkin
