Subject to Change: A label night

Info:

Mikael Szafirowski

I was born to a multi cultural family in Helsinki at the dawn of the 80s. My first real awakening to the power of music was a mix tape with the guitar heroes of the previous decade. Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple and the likes. This music really felt like travelling in space and time and that experience has been something that I’ve been trying to get back to since. Further musical enchantment came by way of being glued to MTV and the music section of the public library.

 My mentors Neff Irizarry, Gilius van Bergijk, Fred Frith, Alfred Zimmerlin and Volker Böhm have each in their way helped me to break from certain confines. Whether it is breaking free from a certain complacency of an (ex-) jazz musician or the dichotomy between composed and found material, or just simply transcending things that I thought I couldn’t do, with time, I understand better how much I owe.

 I’m glad to have played a part in the founding of the bands Rooie Waas, Naked Wolf and the Royal Improvisers orchestra. Besides my own personal work, I’m contributing to the groups Zugabe and Gajar Girl as well as producing music of my friends and doing the occasional sound engineering gig.

Ferric 90 is a product of my experiments in sound synthesis and a search for the sort of narrative form that has been in the back of my head since I started to commit my self to being an improviser. Anytime I was researching a synthesis technique, I would always be recording. This way I could keep and share the initial excitement that I felt from the material and store it away until an opportune moment for telling my story.

The initial version of the music that I sent to Harco was quite a lot more sparse. The prospect of a cassette release prompted me to rework the music. Uncharted waters for me, the format inspired even a little self-reference that you can hear at the beginning of side Play.  The new version started to have more interesting juxtapositions and it started feel more like the album that I was hoping to make.

 I hope it makes you happy as it made me. When you Rewind the tape, remember to listen!