Marja Ahti

I’m delighted to announce that my album Vegetal Negatives will be out on Hallow Ground on March 29th.

Vegetal Negatives is a game of sonic mutations, mimicry, inversions, and association inspired by a text called “On pataphotograms”, by the French writer René Daumal – a quasi-metaphysical essay that toys with breaking the conceived separateness of natural forms through poetic imagination.

The four electroacoustic compositions on the album combine and arrange field recordings, electronic feedback, Buchla and ARP synthesizers, bowl gong and harmonium, textures of detailed acoustic sound, and sustained tones with gentle microtonal beating into a precise musical narrative.

Pre-order here

Record Release at Akusmata, Helsinki March 27th

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Listening being, Titanik Gallery 15.1.–17.2.2019

Group show with Félicia Atkinson, Jessica Ekomane & Silje Nes, Kati Roover and Antti Tolvi. During five weeks, the visitor is invited to spend time in five different soundscapes, which have their origins in varied organic and diverse organisms. You can hear my piece 29.1.–3.2. Welcome also to a discussion between, me, Kati Roover and curator Elina Suoyrjö on the 2th of February.

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EMS Residency, Stockholm 7-12 January

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Entering a Cloud

A piece for the Longform Editions series, an online gallery of extended, immersive music. I recorded this while working on the Healing Bowl performance with sounds from the two projects seeping into each other. It also features sounds from my Alaskan field trip earlier this year.

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Parantava astia – Healing Bowl, performance 23.11.2018, XS vol. 10, Kutomo, Turku.

Collaboration with performance artists Essi Kausalainen and Florian Feigl. A performance for three two legged with support structures, sound system, text and modified sound masses. The title of the piece refers to a healing tradition that operates on resonance produced by specific frequencies. It refers to a bowl both as an instrument and as a vessel for combining and mixing different elements.

Healing Bowl is an illogical performance of the cyclic movement of water, mutations and co-vibration – communication on cellular level. It climbs up the mountain hill, trickles down as sweat, words and streams of sounds. It changes its shape like water evaporating, accumulating and crystallizing. The state of co-vibration is reached when an entity is exposed to the frequency of external force. When the vibrating frequency of systems, such as magnetic fields, machines, structures, bodies or singing bowls, is same or almost the same, resonance occurs. The meeting amplifies the vibration into a particularly large movement, which force can be destructive or healing alike.

Human ear recognizes the vibration of the bowl as harmonies, though sound is also touch and movement. It travels through matter in waves, like water or slime, connecting bodies in distance. Sound clusters into vocables, languages and harmonies, into meanings that gather and dissolve like clouds, building up to downpours and floods. The resonating body is a porous container that leaks. Due to its watery consistency it connects to a larger cycle extending in space and time, yet keeping its shape.

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Neptunalia compilation on Lal Lal Lal / Ikuisuus 2018.

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The new Tsembla album ‘The Hole In The Landscape’ is out 25th of May 2018 on NNA Tapes.

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Anchorage Museum Residency and Performance May 23- June 3.

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Vegetal Negatives, solo exhibition, B-galleria, Turku, 18-29 April 2018

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Electronic Sound Workshop for Women, Ehkä-tuotanto/Kutomo, Turku. 5 and 12 April 2018

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Sound design for Kaisa Koulu’s & Anna Torkkel’s dance performance Folivora. Premiere at Kutomo, Turku 17 May 2018.