An Interview with Kristian Kouvo of Enthronement
by Carly Zander

Tell us a little bit about you... where you're from, your background — will the real Kristian Kouvo please stand up?

I was born in the city Turku, Finland year 1971. I've been interested in alternative/experimental music and electronic noise since childhood. Our family (my parents and my brother) are all musical people and so I've grown naturally into music and it is our "second language."

At first, we had few electronic organs, and later on synthesizers and all kinds of sound effects, delays etc. to play with. My father used to play few years in a band called "Quattro" as a keyboard player and so he naturally updated the needed equipment regularly. Me and my brother got interested in computers and especially composing with them.

In early 90's I joined a coding group called "Accession" as a musician. The machine we were using at the time was Amiga. Our target was to code spectacular demos and compete with the others out there in the scene there was at the time. We joined a few international competitions with our demos and my music got quite a bit of attention. Over the years people split, so I also left these kind of groups, but continued anyway making music for my own pleasure.

There was a time when I took a big loan and bought some MIDI-equipment, workstations etc. based around my Amiga-computer. My aim was to create "new and never before heard electronic music," and maybe release a promo. The problem was, that even though this equipment was cool and expensive, they lacked some important things to make something unique as I'd imagined. MIDI-stuff was expensive, difficult to use and hard to keep in control from track to track. Finally I lost my patience withn this stuff and sold everything. There were a couple years I didn't even own a computer.

In the mid/late-90's I bought a PC. I tried a few music programs with it and found out how powerful the new technologies can be, even just as a stand-alone composing tool — using only PC CPU-time and its audio-card. This was a changing point for me and I started to make electronic music again. This time I felt there were few limitations, and it was quite inspiring in terms of creativity. In the beginning of 2000 I found the ultimate music tool, which I've used on the new CD: Omnipotent Mainframe and will be using also in the future. It's this superior open source software: "Psycle Modular Music Studio." This great piece of software means to me a revolution in the electronic music creation arena and is the "answer to my prayers" for the way I like to compose and create. It has everything I've hoped for.

Today I live in Helsinki and currently I work as a software engineer for a software house called Profiz Solution. Depending on much of the future directions and upcoming happenings, I must choose: will I dedicate all my energy only to create music, or still continue also as a software engineer? Time will tell this and I will live day by day making my decisions step by step.

As a person I am always thinking, experimenting and creative in nature. I like to read philosophy, sosiology and science fiction among other topics. My values are based on nature; what is natural and to be natural. I think native American Indiands did know these things quite well. Living close to the arctic in Finland can also force one to respect and see the greatness in the natural world. I hope people learn to respect nature; to understand that it is our true mother which feeds us, and it will keep us healthy if we just take care of her.

I like science, technology and progress, but at the same time I can see the danger in it. Things like pollution, overpopulation, sources of energy — not to mention war and poverty are many of the things we should take care of instead of just consentrating in evolving new technological breaktroughs. The basis to all life must be taken care of too, and this means our planet, the nature and all living things in it. We should value and have more respect for each other than money. That would be a start. Well as you can see I could get easilly carried away with these kind of matters. I envisioned my music could help people think more of our world, nature and future.

Now back to who I am. Well, in the musical genre I like a lot of what's found in the electronic music scenes like ambient, industrial, d&b, triphop, chillout, goth, EBM, darkwave, electro, and so on. I would like to add something to this world of my own. I respect a lot groups like Laibach, Meat Beat Manifesto, FSOL and Orb. Also Deine Lakaien, VNV Nation, Diorama, Sigur Rus are my beloved paragons. I must say that I listen even to metal music, choirs, capella, ethnic, etcetera — but as we all know the world is full of different and beautiful music and therefore why stick with just one genre? Enjoy them all, if you can.

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Interview: Page 1 :: Page 2 :: Page 3