sayr: salt | thirst out October 24th, 2025 on unmusic
THE ALBUM WILL BE RELEASED
OCTOBER 24TH, 2025
IN DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL FORMATS
ON MY WEBSITE AND ON BANDCAMP.
ASIDE FROM DIGITAL SINGLES,
IT WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE
ON ANY STREAMING SERVICES IN FULL.
THE ALBUM CAN BE PRE-ORDERED
EXCLUSIVELY ON INDIEGOGO
STARTING
TUESDAY, AUGUST 5th, 2025.
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
–T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton: II (1936)
A lot has happened since I wrapped up the Three Seconds | Kolme Toista album cycle with our nonet – both personally, and in the ever-turning world around me.
Of late, inspired by the archaic sound and feel of a late-1940s Gibson LG-2 steel-string acoustic guitar generously gifted to me by my former student Lizzy, I have found myself drawn to solitary reflection and introspection: the small, the simple and the sparse; the rugged earthy; the gnarly unpretty; and most of all, to memories of roots and branches; of bare feet in soil; of paths less – or differently – predetermined.
As a result – and in stark contrast to the through-composed character of Three Seconds –, I am excited to share that I am about to launch my new series of improvised works for solo string instrument, sayr, which explores entanglements between sound and memories through the concepts of acoustemology and the method of loci, also known as the memory palace. The work is part of my practice-based doctoral research at Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki.
The first chapter of the series, sayr: salt | thirst, will be released worldwide on my own label unmusic on October 24th, 2025.
sayr: salt | thirst
a memory palace for solo acoustic guitar
I. salt [17:01]
II. thirst [23:00]
sayr: salt | thirst was recorded in one fully improvised take at my home studio on steel-string acoustic guitar one afternoon in March 2025 and is split into two contrasting arcs, “salt” (17:00) and “thirst” (23:01) as on two sides of a vinyl LP.
The performance is unedited aside from the removal of my sneezing once during the recording, and mixed and mastered by Grammy-nominated engineer Luis Bacqué.
The album weaves textural references of various string instruments from around the world – the guitar, the Finnish kantele, the Arabic oud, the Moroccan sintir, and the West African kora – into a whole refracting echoes of Lightnin’ Hopkins, Ali Farka Touré, Paco de Lucía, Toumani Diabaté, Hamza El Din, Farid al-Atrash, Riad el-Sunbaty, Munir Bashir, Mahmoud Guinia, Umm Kulthum, Fairuz and Camarón de la Isla, with the musical form unfolding a personal narrative that vacillates between lament, unease, brightening and transformation.
