After Silver Lake By Esa Holopainen, the second Amorphis guitarist, Tomi Koivusaari, is now unleashing his very own musical visions. In this interview, Tomi explains how his solo-project BJØRKØ and the debut „Heartrot“ came about, what’s next for Amorphis and which types of chilli he grows.
As far as I know, you finished the album during the pandemic. Did you start with ideas you collected over the years or did you write the album from scratch? How old is the oldest fragment?
I had some rough ideas and riffs in my hard drive, oldest of them is 15 years old or so. I guess every song-writer has some ideas which just didn’t fit what you were doing at the time, wasn’t the style of your main band or you just didn’t know how to proceed with that idea. Then afterwards when you start to re-listen them you might get new ideas. That was happening to me during the pandemic. We already had finished the recordings for Amorphis’ „Halo“-album, and I started to check some stuff I have in my hard drive, and just started to jam those, just for fun at first. So some of the rough ideas are from 15 years ago, but not the whole songs, at least how they turned out to „Heartrot“. About half of the stuff was completely „new“ songs which were composed during the pandemic, after I got the idea to start working with full solo-album.
So not all the ideas were intended for a solo album, but also „leftovers“ from work for other bands, you now dug out again and put them together for this album?
I re-wrote all with solo-album in my mind, there wasn’t any songs which were ”songs” already, just some separate ideas and riffs. From some ideas I made a song and the original riff didn’t even make it to final version of the song, it just was working as starting shot for process.
Referring these older ideas … did you realise from the outset that you wouldn’t use them for Amorphis? How do you decide this when you have an idea for a riff?
As said some of the riffs I’ve made years ago were just short riff ideas, with some I maybe realized at the time that it is not sounding like idea for Amorphis and then just drop the idea. With some I probably didn’t have idea how to proceed to song at the time. Sometimes you get inspirited differently after some time goes by.
Were the songs ready when you went into the studio or did you work on them until the last minute?
Songs were pretty much ready, except the vocal-lines, when entering to studio. I had all the songs demoed by myself and those demos were where other musicians re-played their instruments. Of course every time when working in studio you might get some new ideas. And of course some arrangements like with bass-line or keyboard lines processed in studio when there was professional guy to play those. Some of my own guitar tracks, like solos, are taken from the original demo, as sometimes the very 1st take seems to be the best, or at least liberated and inspirited.
To what extent has the pandemic influenced the creation of the album – also in a negative sense?
I felt very inspirited, as we obviously didn’t hardly have any gigs at the time so playing felt really good. Also I was spending most of the time in my cabin in the middle of forest, and in winter time there wasn’t really that much to do than working with these songs. I had small home-studio built there. Also I mostly worked during the nights, Sao I guess it influenced the atmosphere and tone of the songs. Also I had all the time I needed, which isn’t the case normally as we tour quite much all the time. I don’t think there wasn’t any negative sense from my point of view, except the whole pandemic itself of course.
Stylistically, the album is very broad – sometimes people criticise it for not having a common thread or for sounding too different. Can you understand that?
Sure, I get that. But that is also the case, I wanted it to be more like collection of songs without any stylistic limitation. Anyway if there is different singer to each songs, 3 different languages to use, it’s not gonna sound like basic ”band-album”. I decided to have it this way as this was my solo-project’s album and I wanted to do it this way. I have also get lots of positive response from being that broad. It is not very common these days but that is not the reason for me not to do it this way. I think it more as it could be soundtrack for some imaginary film. Or collection of different kind of songs, which it is. When I started this project I wasn’t even sure if it’s ever gonna published or not, I was doing it for myself without any pressure, I financed everything by myself so I had the final word for everything. When the whole album was mixed and finished, thats was the first time I started to contact with record labels if anyone was interested to release it.
I think it has a bit of a best-of character, the best-of your songs that you didn’t write for any band, so to speak. Is that true?
In some way yes. But I also still have hundreds of ideas which I haven’t used anywhere, so I wouldn’t say best-of, more like ideas which were most inspiriting at the time when started to work with this.
The cover is quite cheesy to be honest, it reminds me a bit of a male version of the „American Beauty“ poster. Why did you want your naked body in a sea of flowers on the cover?
(laughs) Did I want that, I’m not sure! I wanted something which is „out-of-the-box“ for sure. That picture happened by accident in promo-shoot session, when photographer Sam Jamsen’s wife brought all those dead flowers to studio to be used in here own project (whatever it was). Sam was suggesting at the end of session to make that kind of pic just for fun and we did. It wasn’t suppose to end up to cover, but it looked really out-of-the-box and different, so we decided to put it to cover, as didn’t have one yet at the time. Cheesy or not, it stands out for sure.
Yes, that’s definitely true. The band name BJØRKØ means birch island as far as I know, or at least there is an island with the same name in Sweden. Why was it the perfect name for your solo project?
My last name Koivusaari is Birch Island translated in English, Björkö in Swedish. It sounded cooler than just Koivusaari for the project’s name. There are a few islands called Bjørkø, Björkö or Koivusaari in Finland, Sweden and Denmark at least.
As far as I know, there is no ø in Finnish, nor in Swedish – why did you choose the spelling with the two ø?
Ø looked cooler than Ö in this context to me. Also it was less mixed with artist Björk. Who is great by the way.
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You have a lot of guest musicians on the album – did you also work with them on the songs or the vocal arrangement, or was it more the individual work of the guests and you were sent the finished tracks?
Most of the vocalists did their vocal arrangements by their own, half of them even the lyrics as well. I guess there was 3 songs which were totally arranged by me or me and the producer Nino. I was asking from each singers how they wanna do it, by themselves or whole arranged by us beforehand. So of course it is not just my solo-album, lot of credit belongs to featuring artists naturally.
You are certainly very happy about every single guest, because they are all friends of yours – but if you had to emphasise one or two that you were particularly happy about … who would that be?
Yes everyone did awesome job! I had some vision for each singers what it will be like but even that my expectations were high, they all turned even better than I guessed. I really can’t pick one or two by vocal performances, they’re all great.
You often have the fixed idea of a guest post and then for some reason it doesn’t work out in the end. Apart from the people we can now hear on the album, did you have any other people in mind that you would have liked to work with on the album?
Actually almost everyone, vocalists and musicians, I had in my mind and asked said yes. I’m really glad and grateful for that. There was only one singer I had in my mind who couldn’t join because of time-tables. Nice percentage though.
You mentioned before that you still have a lot of material on the computer – will you make another BJØRKØ album out of it?
I have a lot of riffs and ideas still unused from the past. If I ever gonna do the next BJØRKØ album I really can’t say if there will be used those ideas or totally new ones.
Are you generally planning to continue with the project, release more albums and maybe even go on stage?
Honestly I don’t know if there’s gonna be follow up for this. Why not if there is time and inspiration. Why not indeed, it was very satisfying and fun thing to do. Anyway now I have some channel to put different kind of ideas out if I want. But Amorphis is naturally taking most of my time and that’s of course my main focus. I haven’t planned any live shows for BJØRKØ, in theory it could be possible but it would be very hard to gather all the musicians together, as everyone are so busy in their own main bands. But never say never. One show would be fun.
And last but not least: What can we expect from Amorphis in the near future? Are you working on new material?
Yes we have started to work with new material with Amorphis, everyone is composing stuff now on their own and we will soon check the new songs together. We are planning to go to the studio at end of this year, so the next Amorphis album will be out 2025. We still continue touring this year by latest „Halo“ album though, so there will be busy year this one as well for us.
Thank you very much for your answers – lets end this interview with a short brainstorming session. What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the following terms?
Death Metal: I love it, especially old school dm late 80’s-early 90’s.
Germany: Very important market for Amorphis since the very beginning of our career. Also home-base of our label.
The best thing about life on tour: Shows. Meeting fans. Seeing new places (not that many unseen though with these years)
The worst thing about life on tour: Waiting, waiting…Sometimes traveling itself can be rough. Not too much time for sleep.
Your favorite type of flowers: I don’t know about flowers but I love chili and I grow my own chili plants. Habanero and Carolina Reaper are the favorites.
The Silver Lake by Esa Holopainen: Really good stuff from my band-bro.
BJØRKØ in ten years: Time will tell.
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22. Januar 2024 Moritz Grütz
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Zur besseren Lesbarkeit wurden Smilies ersetzt.