Interview with Mikko Pöyhönen

May 31st 2007 - by O.S. & D.M.K.

All images by Topias Salonen, Tuhat Kuolemaa Sekunnissa or Evening of Light.

Together with guitarist Antti Paavilainen, Mikko Pöyhönen is the Finnish neofolk project Tuhat Kuolemaa Sekunnissa, which released its promising self-titled debut earlier this year. Mikko takes care of the vocals, bass and lyrics, and since he was coming to Amsterdam in May, we made an appointment for a live-interview on the spot. We asked him about the ideas behind the project, the debut album, and the future plans of the band.

After hearing and reviewing the promising debut album of this Finnish neofolk project, we were interested in doing an interview with the band. It turned out that one of the members (Mikko - guitar, bass, vocals, lyrics) was visiting Amsterdam in May 2007, and we arranged to meet him for an interview in person. After a pleasant conversation over some pints in the pub, we slowly went towards the little restaurant, where we would enjoy our dinner and conduct the interview in a quiet atmosphere at the same time.

To introduce the project, the tall Finn told us about the origin of the band name. Tuhat Kuolemaa Sekunnissa is Finnish, of course, and it means 'a thousand deaths per second'. Obviously, we though it was a surprisingly harsh name for a project that plays relatively pleasant sounding folk songs. Mikko explains why: "I knew you were going to ask this, I don't have any good explanation for it. It's a stance that I have, a personal stance, on this kind of music. You have to be harsh these days with folk music; you have to be a little bit crude. I wanted to be as straight as possible, not on any particular subject, but on the stance that I have on this kind softer music, that can be vocal, that can be interesting." The band name purposefully doesn't refer to any religious or political phenomena outside the music, as the idea is to let the music speak for itself. The songs are about various themes, and to have a name that explicitly refers to one theme would not be a good representative of what the band is about. Mikko explains that the name just says what it says, that music and lyrics can be outspoken, personal, and harsh. He also emphasises that he means to attract as much attention to the actual personal nature of the lyrics as possible: "People don't usually concentrate on the lyrical part anymore, especially in this scene - you read a book or two and you write about that book - it's really boring to hear music about old stories and stuff like that... - OK, it's interesting, but there's a stop to everything."

Mikko had started a project with his current bandmate Antti Paavilainen in 2004, called Green Symbol, where they made folk mixed with industrial, and English lyrics. After a while, though, they were not satisfied with the way things were going, and the project went through a change: "After we recorded like 6 or 7 songs of Green Symbol, there was kind of a complete halt of the thing - basically it was getting so boring. All the English - it wasn't that interesting with the industrial sounds. I wanted to make it more simple and I suggested to Antti we should do stuff in Finnish. We should do this in Finnish and cut down the synthesizers and cut down the drums - just the basic guitars and accordion [by guest musician Pihla Patamaa], kind of a folky combo." The entire thing came together at the spring equinox of 2005, when Tuhat Kuolemaa Sekunnissa was born. The choice of switching to Finnish lyrics proved to be a succesful one, as Mikko relates: "I realised that enough music today is made in English, all things you can say in English basically have been said - and I'm not that good in English that I can say it any better." The choice for the native language then seems natural, which to Mikko is of course very personal, but also colourful and expressive. "Finnish is a beautiful language, you should use it more - you should use it, because it's so flexible, you should use it any way possible." There is also no way back for Mikko, now that the choice is made: "The lyrics is something I would never translate - no way. If someone would ask the meaning of something, then of course I would explain it. No, because the Finnish language is so much different from the English - the kind of things you pronounce with words - you promote something with words, then you translate it to English, and it sounds so stupid."

The lyrics themselves are often quite abstract and poetic, and treat themes in an unorthodox manner. The use of certain poetic symbols is also important in Mikko's writing. Snakes and serpents, for example, feature in several tracks on the Tuhat Kuolemaa Sekunnissa album. "I have a relation to lizards and snakes, I like them very much. I like to have at least three themes within the album, and I chose snakes because they're an important part of the mythical construct, and through them it's easy to represent everything: they can be horrendous, they can be mean, they can be friendly, they can be wisdom-granting - you can find them anywhere." The symbols function as an abstract language, though, and do not refer to any personal spirituality or religion. Mikko states that he indeed considers himself a spiritual person, but that this is not expressed in the music and lyrics. He thinks that political and spiritual themes in music are taken for granted these days, and that in principle it's good that you can express yourself freely. However, he has reservations about actually doing so, because of the nature of a permanent recording: "There's the fact that when you say something aloud on record, it stays there forever, you can't alter that. And I try not to be direct about these things, not in the songs, because every message put on the record changes through time. Any kind of rigid stance, religious or political, cannot survive, it becomes stale, you know - when time rolls over, you listen to the songs, and think 'Oh my god... this is boring stuff. This is from twenty years ago.'"

Another one of the tracks, "Suomalainen Laulu" ('A Finnish Song'), has more anecdotal lyrics, and it seems to express a certain view on what it means to be Finnish. Mikko explains what's behind this track: "The inspiration of the song is actually written in the song. I was... at home, one night... OK, and drunk... 'intoxicated'... and I started to play a simple Finnish tune on the Kantele, and I started singing kind of loudish lyrics, improvisation or something on top of it. And then I broke the string... The song itself is not about Finland or the Finnish state of mind - we have that so much already in the Finnish heavy metal scene. But, basically it's my own state of mind, reflected on the fact that I was doing something perceived to be 'very Finnish': like, you know, being drunk... playing Kantele." In any case, the new Finnish folk scene seems to be full of activity and creativity. We asked Mikko about his views on the phenomenon, and he thinks there is a kind of weirdness or creative glitch these people have in common. "I think there is something creative in the entire mentality of Finnish art. If you look at -to me- the best Finnish artists, painters and writers and stuff, they were all a bit 'out there', you know. Not conventional, not participating in normal life. That, I believe, drives it, and that's a good thing. Also I think there's some kind of boredom of the usual stuff: rock'n'roll, pop/rock, pop punk... The entire Finnish music production is so divided. There is basically the big bands, that tour around the world and so on, very intersting, basically. And then there are the occasional free minds - you know freefolk, Islaja and stuff like that. And we talked about Halo Manash and related artists. It's a creative glitch in the entire Slavic people, I like it very much, I like the insanity of it all."

Apart from personal experiences and thoughts, we wondered about the inspiration for the first album, and about the role nature and art played in it. For one thing, the work of Olavi Paavolainen was an influence, as was Finnish traditional music, or, as Mikko puts it, "The simplicity of a few players doing loud music." Nature plays a big role both in the music of Tuhat Kuolemaa Sekunnissa and Mikko's personal life. "We recorded the album in my grandfather's house in Central Finland, which is basically in the middle of nature. Of course, the setting, whatever it is, even if it's something you're not concentrating on, always appears in the music, whether you want it or not. I do respect nature, I think it's something I try to reflect on. It's something I reflect everyday life through. I live in the city, but still, even with all the concrete, even if you have the basic city scene - there is nature sprouting everywhere, you know, from the cracks of the road. And in Finland we endorse it, at least we have endorsed it in the past; we build cities so that there is easy access to natural spaces - forest, sea, lakes and everything. That's something special, I think. So it's a part of everyday life, I try to collect everything - even the most mundane lyric or thought related to the band, I try to make it so it has a reflection of nature."

Of course, there are several things planned for the future of the project. First of all, a new album is being recorded, which will feature more extensive instrumentation than the first one. Mikko has recorded a part of the new material already, and Antti will add his parts in the near future, when he returns from abroad. New instruments like flute are to be added, but the overall music should remain playable live by three people. "We try to keep it as simple as possible. And we try to keep it so that only three of us can play the instruments - I try to play as many instruments as possible - I'm not really a guitar player myself, I'm more of a bassist, I sing and do some percussion - but anyway - some more variations are expected." Besides practical reasons, keeping things simple is inline with the general feeling of the project. Mikko aims to be straightforward, and "I like the risk-taking - I don't like to sound like your regular folk-musician, with a soft tone. The straightforwardness of it all, it gives a lot of room when you don't have to be mellow."

Besides a new album, a split with Aura Shining Green is also set to be released in the future. About these recordings, Mikko says: "The recording session itself is not anything pretty. We were basically... hung over, you know. We had been drinking the night before, and the next morning we decided that we should record something together. We didn't know really what. I think Mika [of Aura Shining Green] had some songs with him. Mika was staying at my home during his trip to Helsinki and we decided to do a split single, like one song per artist, but as we recorded, we noticed it was going so well, we decided to make it an EP. So it's three songs per artist, but one with the participation of the other artist."

After dinner, and a lot of pleasant off-the-record conversation, we headed back to the bustle of the city center, stopping for some brief pictures on the way. We thank Mikko for a pleasant evening and for the interview. When there is more Tuhat Kuolemaa Sekunnissa material available in the future, we'll be covering it.

[About the last picture: In the Netherlands we know Multatuli as the pseudonym for Eduard Douwes Dekker, the famous writer about colonial Indonesia. In Latin his name means something like 'I have carried much'. In Finnish multa tuli means something entirely different, as Mikko explained to us:In Finnish this text has its own meanings, actually a couple of them, of which one is quite raw. "Multa tuli" is slang for "I came", as in a sexual reference.]

Related articles:

• review: Tuhat Kuolemaa Sekunnissa (7,5/10)
• interview: Juha Kettunen (Somnivore, Anima Arctica Records)