KIZUNAUT
I am Oskari Lappalainen, aka KIZUNAUT, a 32-years old musician and writer for Absynth among other things which include my administrative dayjob. I started Kizunaut in 2017 as a side-project to my back-then two-man band which never really got off the ground. I have been making music since 2008 or so, starting with a solo project, moving to a band that produced a mix of industrial rock and electronica, before moving to another solo project, before moving to another attempt at a band and finally Kizunaut.
These years included a long hiatus during which I mostly focused on my studies. I graduated from the University of Helsinki in 2017 as a Master of Social Sciences, majoring in sociology, with science and technology studies and computer science as minors. I entered the academic world wanting to understand the world and humanity, and left with a sense that neither of these are truly understandable. Nevertheless, I have retained the curious and analytical attitude that led me to my academic detour. These years also gave me experience in writing, both within the courses and to several student magazines. I have utilized these skills in my later ventures.
I am a producer and a multi-instrumentalist, playing keyboards, guitar and singing. I picked up the guitar in late 2020. I had tried to learn guitar from 2011 onwards, but never found the time to do so during my studies and had convinced myself that I could not do it. But one can not escape one’s dreams and inspirations forever, and the Covid isolation had proved the perfect opportunity to learn the guitar. Picking up guitar was an extremely revitalizing experience, and I enjoy playing it tremendously and it has brought new blood to old ideas.
My discography as Kizunaut includes two albums, several singles and the Crisis 2033 EP. This Was The Future (2019) was an album which dealt with dark retrofuturism, hauntology, and a feeling of lost future, a kind of attempt at making sense of the craving for nostalgia which pervaded the cultural atmosphere. The City by the Sea (2020) was about the struggles and joys of modern urban life, an attempt at connecting my emotions of feeling disenchanted with urban life to a larger social sphere.I enjoy making music with some kind of a bigger idea or concept behind it.
My music as Kizunaut has constantly been moving towards a more rock-oriented style. I started off with pure electronic music as at the time I was really inspired by it and had grown somewhat frustrated with my attempts at making industrial rock with other people. This Was the Future incorporated singing and a style of composition that mimicked synthpop and industrial rock while using synths as stand-ins for guitars. Ever since 2021 I have included guitar in my music. I like to have a solid electronic basis in my music, but I also like to incorporate human elements to it. It keeps it from becoming too sterile and stale.
Beyond making music, I enjoy videogames, science fiction, anime, delving into the crazy creative vortex of modern net culture, learning, pondering about the mysteries of existence, reading, eating and spending time with my friends.
My new single Leave Humanity Behind deals with humanity’s dreams of achieving a kind of transcendence through technology, the old dreams of technological singularity. Or perhaps it is technology itself whispering these promises to us? Whatever the case, I find myself critical of such far-fetched dreams so reliant on a force that has proven so unreliable, so impossible to predict, and with such great externalities.
Technology has destroyed as much as it has given, and it has pushed humanity into an unprecedented dialectical spiral: technology creates problems and then creates new technology to try to solve these problems. This has given humanity never seen before advances in many sectors of life, but also irrevocably altered the global biosphere and human culture. Is it all really worth it? Is more technology upon technology really the answer?
Musically it’s inspired by synthwave, synthpop and industrial, with an ever so slight hint of shoegaze and modern electronica in its DNA. Spiraling bass arps, echoing piano, shimmering arps and gritty guitars serve as the instrumental backbone. The track features a heavy layering of instruments, building constantly upon itself much like technology constantly builds upon itself in it’s eternal forwards-going spiral.
The vocals are heavily effected by a mix of a crude autotuning software and extreme distortion: it serves as a sonic counterpart to the lyrical themes of struggling with and doubting technology; a computer program seeking to overpower the human voice. The heavily modulated lead in the chorus also utilizes the same crude autotune software in a way rarely seen. These last creative touches were inspired by Oneotrhix Point Never’s extreme vocal edits.
As for musical inspirations, in general, I draw from several different strands: the 80s pop and 90s eurodance that populated the airwaves of Finland during my childhood, metal music which I got into during the huge metal boom in Finland during early 00s, the oldschool industrial music I discovered through Laibach, which I discovered through getting into Rammstein and Fear Factory as a teen.
I am also influenced by synthwave, which I see kind of encapsulating all of these inspirations and also influences from video game music, and other forms of contemporary music. I particularly enjoy music with strong rhythms, a kind of dark passion, good hooks and depth beyond the surface. There’s such great music in almost all genres, from traditional rock to EDM, dubstep and techno, and you can hear splashes of influence from surprising genres in my music.
Individual artists that have served as major inspiration to me include Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, New Order, HEALTH, Perturbator, Dan Terminus, Carpenter Brut, Irving Force, Covenant, Apoptygma Berzerk, Skinny Puppy, Haujobb, Front 242, Front Line Assembly, Haujobb, and Nitzer Ebb. The videogame composer Frank Klepacki deserves a special mention. His soundtracks for Command & Conquer and Red Alert introduced me to music that I would later understand to be influenced by 90s industrial and electronic music.
As for the future, during 2021 I have been mostly wrapping up various pieces of music from my vault that would fit to be released as singles. I have had various conflicting ideas for future albums, but there have been also a number of tracks that, while I think they are solid, just do not necessarily to fit into a larger whole. Covid has put life into a kind of pause, and I have tried my best to make use of it and releasing singles and building up connections and expanding the potential listener base have seemed like a good way to spend the time.
More concretely, I have a fun darksynth influenced thing coming in time for Halloween. After that, I have 1-2 more somber, personal pieces coming for the winter, and perhaps a small surprise for the early spring if timetables allow.
Beyond that, I have reached a solid idea for the next album. It will deal with humanity’s relationship with technology through metaphors of attraction, addiction, love, dependency and craving, treating technology as a kind of a living, breathing thing with an almost occult, invisible, but very real power. I feel like humanity’s relationship with technology has become painfully intimate and very confusing, with it shaping much of our relationships and perceptions in ways that we rarely seem to really reflect upon.
I think the dry, academic, economic, ways of talking about technology and its impact on society have failed humanity. The way people reacted sarcastically to Black Mirror which made a valiant attempt at shedding light on potential future courses is symptomatic. We are creatures of narrative, belief and myth, of social relations and personal sentiments. It’s one thing to say that computers have become detrimental to our happiness; another to sing that we are in love with the wrong things in life. I hope I can reach not only fresh musical territory but also perhaps find new ways to speak about certain things with the coming album. If nothing else, it will be a valiant, defiant exercise in being human.
For more KIZUNAUT, visit kizunaut.bandcamp.com