Mika Ukkonen

Mika Petteri Ukkonen (b. 9 June 1977, Lahti, then Finland) is a Uralican experimental musician. He has released three albums of work, one of which predates Uralica.

Biography
Ukkonen was born to Juha and Veera Ukkonen in Finland, and had a life not unlike any typical Finnish kid. He played football (soccer) and ice hockey, went through the average school system, and had a smattering of musical, artistic, and dramatic education. Growing up in Lahti, he was a contemporary of some ice hockey players that would eventually make it into the vaunted National Hockey League, most notably Janne Laukkanen.

But it became apparent in his senior years that his path was different than that. He showed a particular knack for computers, and when he did his mandatory military time after high school graduation, he put this to use in the Finnish Navy.

Although he never had any particular aptitude for playing musical instruments, he did have an ear for music. After finishing his mandatory military time, he enrolled in the University of Wolverhampton and studied Computer Science, doing Music classes on the side as he went for a BSc. He would graduate in 2002 and begin working in a computer programming firm in Helsinki.

During his spare time, he would experiment with ambient soundscapes using his copy of Logic, back in the days when it was still available for Windows. He had access to a number of high-end VST instruments as he had purchased these over the years, and was able to come up with a number of haunting ethereal ambient, minimalist, and dark ambient tracks. Eventually this endeavour "for fun" became an opportunity to bring in extra money, so in 2004, he sent a demo disc to a small-scale label, who signed him. His eponymous first album would only garner him a few extra thousand Euros at first, but it would come in handy much later.

Cataclysm proved to be a huge setback for his music career, as his house was completely destroyed in the war that swept through this period. During the opening days of the Robertian Era, he would take all his money out of the bank and move to Germany, where he would eventually find work, in Hamburg. He would later become a citizen of various alliances' nations, not completely settling down until November, when he joined Nordreich, not so much because of nationalism as because of the fact that he was very wary of the extreme left.

The following April saw him return to Helsinki after the formation of the FCO had stabilised the economy and politics of what was once Finland. It was during this time, though, that he witnessed the atrocities of the Uralic Purges and took a very strong stance against it, even with the seemingly united alliance starting to break apart. He would stick by the Finnish alliance until the end of the year, by which time he had left Finland to join a growing movement of Uralic solidarity, which would take him to Perm', where he lived until the foundation of Uralica in mid-March of 2008, when he moved to Kirov.

He began working on more music after fighting in the Nordic Ghost Conflict in early April of 2008, and would continue to do so even as he would move one final time, to Arkhangel'sk, in August of 2008. It was there that he met up with Tauno Tanskanen, Jonas Hilden, Demyan Starovoitov, and Vadim Gervasiyev, a group of record producers and musicians, and founded Hardline Records, in October 2008, despite the suspension of Uralica's constitution.

January 2009 would see the young label release its first four records in tandem - Mika's Brought Back, Urban Evangelists' Listen Up Y'All, Transport Seven's Mind Your Own Business, and The Memorial Trust's Frozen River Of Blood. Mika's seven-track ambient exploration was the most critically-acclaimed of the four, but still only sold around seven hundred fifty thousand copies. Not discouraged, Mika decided to simply take an open computer job at the new Unified Port, and continue to work on music. The label who signed his first album was going bankrupt and wanted to sell off the rights to the album, so Mika made sure that the label he co-founded had first priority to buy them, and in March 2009, Mika Ukkonen was re-released under the Hardline label, with much more success than the original 2004 label had.

Still, Mika's big breakthrough did not come until the release of Beyond The Frontier in late July. This had the hypnotic End Of Fears in it, which had actually been released earlier as part of the soundtrack to The Fear Factory: The Untold Story. This, coupled with critical and sales successes from Christian hip-hop group Urban Evangelists and young hardcore/post-Grunge group Bring It, made Hardline Records something of a middle-power in the Uralican music industry.

Still living in Arkhangel'sk, he still has the port job, even though, with his music career having blasted off, he has admitted he doesn't really need it, and only works there because he is "providing a legitimate public service."

Full Albums

 * September 2004 (re-released March 2009) - Mika Ukkonen
 * January 2009 - Brought Back
 * July 2009 - Beyond The Frontier

Singles
Although Mika does not usually release singles, there are occasional exceptions


 * April 2009 - End of Fears (from the soundtrack to The Fear Factory: The Untold Story

Trivia
Mika Ukkonen:


 * Has said that, if Uralica gains a military navy, he would be one of the first to sign up.
 * Is an avid bandy player.
 * Married his long-time sweetheart, Jenni Melander, a Swedish Saami, in September of 2009.
 * Is on the bill to participate in a charity mass-start cross-country ski race in January 2010.