Aleksi Perälä

Born in 1976, Perälä was already making records as a teenager in the 1990s, and went on to study music technology in Helsinki in the 2000s, where he had the chance to work in the studio of Finnish music pioneer Erkki Kurenniemi, which contained many of the prolific researcher, inventor, and musician’s own homemade electronic instruments and synths. Transformed by his impressions of acid-house and the discovery of Richard D. James aka Apex Twin, Perälä self-released several albums as Ovuca before signing to Rephlex, where he has also collaborated with labelmate Cylob in punching-out the sound-warped Cylobotnia, a cross-breed of percussion heavy electronic experimentation.

Inspired from his time at Erkki Kurenniemi’s studio, Perälä also worked on creating his own musical scale, dubbed The Colundi Sequence, together with label partner Grant Wilson Claridge. As he explains to The Wire: “Instead of dividing the keyboard into octaves with semitones, we have chosen specific frequencies to work around... The scale is 128 resonant frequencies … each relating to a specific human bio-resonance, or psychology, traditional mysticism or belief, physics, astronomy, maths, chemistry.” The result is equally enjoyable to those dark to its method of creation, punching out an AFX memory-worthy drum rhythm, and an alien propulsion of melodic bells that you can move your mind to.