Kari Ojala

Kari Aleksi Ojala (b. 24 January 1982, Turku, then Finland) is a Uralican symphonic hard trance musician. He has released three albums to date.

Biography
Ojala was born in Turku, Finland to Jousia and Raili Ojala, who were both office workers. He did show some musical talent early in life, having been given piano lessons from age six onward, but the development of juvenile arthritis hampered his ability considerably, and he was forced to quit.

However, he discovered the world of computer music in his teens via the program Fruity Loops, which had been installed on a computer at school, and became deeply interested in the particular genre of trance, specifically hard and uplifting trance. Inspired by the likes of Darude, Sectoid Blue, DJ Tiësto, and Paul van Dyk, he took to trying to make the stuff, only to find himself limited. He went to a music supplies store in Turku and asked if there were better programs, and upon learning of better programs, he began saving the money he made in summer jobs up, and eventually bought a program he still swears by today, Reason.

His eponymous first album actually predates his days in Uralica. When still living in what was then Finland, even during the tough times that were post-Cataclysm, he worked hard on his music while finishing an education in computer science. As a citizen of the FCO, he produced this first album under the auspices of OrgaNik Records, a small label based in Porvoo. It was released in December of 2006.

Unfortunately, 2007 was not a good year for Kari. He had to take a leave from his techie job to fight in two wars - Great War III and The Unjust War - and ended up injured in both, including a life-threatening internal injury from the former that required a liver transplant. On top of this, his sister Heljä was killed in Viipuri (then Vyborg) during the Uralic Purges.

Ojala moved to Syktyvkar in late November of 2007, to "get away from it all." Naturally, his computer skills garnered him attention, and he quickly got a job working for a computer repair shop. He used this to his advantage by using his employee discount to buy upgrades for his own computer, and his music career, after being on hiatus from March of 2007 onward, was finally back on track.

Things were peaceful and "on the up" for Kari, until he was directly involved in the Syktyvkar Riots of 2 March 2008, where he injured five Russian supremacists while sustaining only a broken nose in the process. However, he also shared in the personal guilt backlash from that, and three days later, even though he himself was neither a Christian nor a Jew, he decided to join the predominantly Judaeo-Christian population in the powerful but peaceful Three-Day Revolution. The experience profoundly changed Ojala, and only a week later, he accepted Jesus as his saviour, and began planning his baptism.

But becoming a Christian was only the first part of the change for Ojala. He began writing music more frequently than he had ever done. Since Jarkko Salomäki and a few people from Life To The Fullest Records already had purchased his first album and heard what he was capable of, they gave him a listen after finding out he lived in the newly-formed country of Uralica, and loved what they heard, so they got his phone number and asked him to come into the LTTF Studios in downtown Syktyvkar, so that his newest works could be mastered.

After another month of rigorous music-making, Transformed was released in May of 2008. The rights to his first album were purchased from OrgaNik by Life To The Fullest a week later.

He moved to Pazhga after that, and lives there to this day. Still not a full-time musician, he is the manager of a UralTek CompuShop, and on Sundays, he is the sound guy for the Church of the Resurrection.

His third album, Never Look Back, was released in March of 2009, and he has recently begun work on a fourth album. Oddly enough, he has never released singles in his career.

Discography

 * December 2006 - Kari Ojala
 * May 2008 - Transformed
 * March 2009 - Never Look Back
 * TBA 2010 - The Winds Of Change

Inspirations
Kari Ojala has had many musical influences over his career. He claims that Darude and Sectoid Blue got him into trance, however his work leans more towards the influences of Svenson and Gielen, Johnny Vicious, Al Azar, and DJ Tiësto. More recently, his music has been more symphonic than it was at first, drawing heavily on Baroque, Classical, and Neo-Classical technique.

Trivia

 * Kari has been involved in every major global conflict. He fought in Great War I as a member of the NAAC and was a member of Homeland Security in the same during Great War II, then joined the FCO afterwards and fought for them in Great War III, during which he was nearly killed, and The Unjust War. He fought for CCC during War of the Coalition and was in the Second Finnish Division during the Karma War.
 * Kari is a teetotaler. He claims to have not had a drop of alcohol since being shot twice in the abdomen in Kingisepp, forcing him to have a liver transplant.
 * Kari is currently working on an MSc at Uralikan Yliopisto in Computer Science, but is only a part-time student and doesn't expect himself to finish until at least 2011.