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There's no doubt about it, I have been in the margin from day one. Like being born to a remote corner of Europe. Nevertheless I like it here!
I started making music in about 1972 - I was 12 years old then. I bought a used electric guitar with a friend and we quickly found others willing to start a band. Groups like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Uriah Heep were the ones to follow then. |
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| Pretty soon I found myself in a guitar-based prog band called Mojova Lisä which lasted for about ten years. Lineup: Me and Eero Soininen - guitars, Juha Eskelinen - bass, Jari Närvä - Drums. At gigs we played a mixed set with the increasingly complex pieces we conjured up ourselves and more conventional rock songs by everybody from Ted Nugent to Devo. In '76 the desire for a more keyboard-oriented sound lead us acquiring our first synth - a preset "Moog" which was originally made as a home organ accompaniment. More keyboards followed, including a Rhodes and a Micro-Moog. We started drifting towards electronic new wave and eventually managed to make one single which didn't get much attention. My favourite groups during the '70s were the usual prog suspects (ELP, Yes, Zappa, King Crimson, Gong, Gentle Giant etc.) but at some point I became interested in Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. New wave brought such notable bands as XTC, Devo and Human League, which conveniently leads to the next phase of my musical activities... | ||||
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In 1982 I moved to Helsinki, the Finnish capital (to study astronomy - mainly because I didn't manage to get to an art school) and formed a synth pop band called Tapa Paha Tapa. We released one cassette, "Aurinko" by ourselves. It's a mixture of quirky, melodic synth pop songs (in Finnish) and electronic ambient instrumentals. We sold a good few copies of it and did some gigs. A CDR is available directly from Visual Power. | ||||||
| Some more recording followed in our "studio" - which was located in an emptied swimming pool!
Main synth gear at that time was a Roland 100-M modular synth with CSQ-100 and CSQ-600 sequencers, a TR-606 and a TB-303, and a Casio keyboard. |
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| The line-up was changing, but included Jari Heikkinen, Esa Hyvönen, Mirja Nevalainen and Teija Korkia-Aho on vocals with Jari and Esa doubling on synths and percussion.
A collection of unreleased Tapa Paha Tapa songs, Koko Elma, was released in 2002. |
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In 1986 I managed to get a record deal with a split-personality incarnation of our synth-pop outfit which actually was two different bands - one side of an LP each! Unfortunately the record company went out of business before they released the album ("Atleten") - but they also had agreed to release an instrumental album of my solo recordings, which got released.
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I decided to call myself "Visual", and the album got it's name from an error message I got frequently when programming: "Division by Zero". Unfortunately the master tapes went with the record company, but I've got a decent, Raygunned CDR transfer from vinyl plus three extra tracks that were left out of the LP. Gear used on that album: the Roland System 100M, a DX7, an Ensoniq Mirage, a TR-707, and a Greengate DS-3 sampler plus some Simmons drumming by my TPT pal Esa Hyvönen. Sequencing was done on a Commodore 64 with Steinberg's first sequencer software (needless to say, it didn't resemble Cubase very much...)
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In 1987 I started a company - Visual Power - with my colleague from Atleten, Jouni Halmari. We saw an opportunity in making soundtracks for industrial videos, tv programs and commercials, documentaries etc. and decided it was at least a good way to finance an expensive hobby!
The first Ozone Player CD, Insane Logic was released in 2000. The second "official" album É was released in October 2002 (there was a limited edition CDR released in 2001, called Videozone, which was a promotional collection of some soundtrack work by me and Jouni). The first live Ozone Player performance happened in September 2003 at the Different Skies festival in Arcosanti, Arizona, USA. Jouni died in July 2004. I am sure I will miss him as long as I live. |
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