ANTON NIKKILÄ - FORMALIST

Exotica, 1998
[techno, experimental, jungle, minimal]

Anton Nikkilä (born 1965) is an experimental musician and composer who lives and works in Helsinki. He started making music in the ”post-punk” milieu of the early 80’s, ran the cassette label Valtavat Ihmesilmälasit Records in 1980–82 and attended John Cage’s summer courses in Finland in 1983. Later during the 1980’s he was actively involved in Russian underground rock as a translator (which subsequently became his official profession) and in many other roles, including journalist and festival organiser (to which he returned later when working as the director of Avanto Helsinki Media Art Festival in 2003–2005). In the early 90’s he studied Russian literature and musicology and became father of two children.
Anton Nikkilä’s first solo album ”Formalist” was released by Moscow’s Exotica label in 1998. In 2000 he started the N&B Research Digest label with Alexei Borisov, his musical collaborator since the mid-90’s. Their duo, based on Nikkilä’s compositions, Borisov’s texts and improvised noise by both, has produced two studio albums and two live albums.
”Since the early 1990’s, the Russian Alexei Borisov and the Finn Anton Nikkilä have been engaging in a cross-cultural dialogue invigorated rather than encumbered by the complex and conflicted political relationship of their native countries. Their conclusions have mostly been published by their own N&B Research Digest imprint. Nikkilä states that three ideas lie behind the label’s mock-institutional facade and plainspeak notes: conceptualism, experimentalism and archival work.”
(Matthew Wuethrich, The Wire, July 2008)
"Experimental music is not dependent on institutional definitions; it constitutes a field, albeit fragmentary, of its own - a no man's land. The electro-acoustic music of Anton Nikkilä, for example, a musician with an avant-punk background, neatly defies all conventional definitions. His minimalist industrial dada is equally at home in clubs and in concert halls reserved for classical music."
(Tanja Uimonen, Finnish Music Quarterly 3/2007)

1. Jingle - 4:37
2. Kehä II - 3:00
3. Get To The Machine - 4:59
4. This Area - 4:40
5. Blank - 5:31
6. Music For Yakowlef (Pt. 2) - 3:19
7. Politically - 3:40
8. Oil On Plate - 4:44
9. Synchro-System - 5:21
10. Stuttgart - 2:40
11. Contact Sheets - 4:50
12. Hyper-Real - 3:09

вернуться в каталог