Jyrki Ransu Koistinen, MEng, PhD (b. 8 July 1971, Espoo, then Finland) is a Uralican musician, author, engineer, and professor at Uralikan Yliopisto. He is best known for his electronic music endeavours.
Biography[]
The son of an auto mechanic and a professional trumpetist, Jyrki lived a fairly normal life in Espoo, Finland, not quite showing the virtuosic qualities of his present-day Uralican contemporaries, Sirkka Numminen, Ruslan Kamyshin, or Martin Kosk, and with his parents not quite able to afford the extra schooling that the Sibelius Academy offered. Still, he would enjoy banging on random objects and listening to the sounds they made. It was found out by the time he was 12 that he had perfect pitch.
His composition skills didn't really surface until he was in his early teens, and even then, he was limited to writing on notation paper he had to buy himself. Fortunately, his other passion, for tinkering and mechanics, would end up bringing him some extra cash, as he quickly showed a knack for small engine repair, likely picked up from watching his father. He would actually work for his father when he was not in school.
He was always amazed by the musical works of Jean-Michel Jarre, Lev Termen (Leo Theremin), and the Industrial movement - he found the uniqueness of their sound and of the instruments they used to be far more enthralling than the "new wave."
Upon graduation from high school in 1989, he went to the University of British Columbia on a scholarship to study science, and later engineering. It was here that he first got into working with computers, which at the time were quite primitive by today's standards, but he slowly developed a knack for that area as well, becoming an avid programmer and taking an almost unhealthy interest in writing new programs.
With the release of Front Line Assembly's apical album Tactical Neural Implant in 1992, he became so enthralled by the musical movement that he insisted on attempting to build computers with the ability to produce different kinds of sound. With computer engineering still a young field, it was a risk he took, to do this for his Engineering degree projects, but he wowed his professors with the ability he showed, even if his music wasn't "their thing."
They insisted he do an MEng immediately, right after he graduated with his BEng in early 1994. But tragedy struck, requiring him to return to Finland. His mother was killed in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. So there he was, back in Espoo, wondering what the future would hold for him. He sank into a deep depression, to the point where he said "he didn't know if it was worth getting out of bed in the morning just to go work on cars and lawnmowers all day."
But in 1996, his life would turn around in a big way over a very short period of time. It started fairly small-scale, with he, his father, and his brother and sister getting money through an insurance policy. He left Finland again, this time for Germany, and invested in several early Virtual Studio Technology products - using these, he began venting his frustration at life in the Industrial style, using his computer savvy to work things out quickly. He also took a course in sound management at a community college in Ulm, and began working local gigs.
Eventually, he would end up in a Christian rock concert in Stuttgart and meet his eventual wife, Karin Lohr.
Convinced by Lohr to submit his Industrial projects as demos, he got signed to a small-scale record deal that brought in some further money, enough that he could return to Canada to complete his engineering education.
This time enrolling in the University of Victoria, he was inspired by a couple certain professors who would create their own electronic musical instruments, so he set about doing so himself for his MEng projects, creating a very complex hardware synthesiser that he enjoyed playing around with. He got his MEng in 2000 - a blend of computer engineering, computer science, and software engineering - and was hired by a high-end computer music corporation, which would take him back to Germany and Karin.
Working in the company had its drawbacks though, and even with Karin, whom he married in 2002, Jyrki felt something was missing. Then the Cataclysm of late 2005 came. War ravaged the world, and Germany was one of the hardest-hit areas, even in the south. Karin would perish in a firestorm near Koblenz.
He spent a year trying to figure out how his life could possibly improve. He had no idea if his family was still alive, and the woman he loved had been taken from him. He harboured a grudge against politicians in general after the fact, although he did fight for LoSS as a mercenary during Great War I.
He found himself returning to Espoo by the beginning of 2007, just as the FCO was starting to form. Although the nationalism gave him something concrete to follow for a time, he still felt something was missing, and four months later, during the later stages of Great War III, he found out what, as his ethnic cousins in the Uralics were being murdered by Russian supremacists. He saw and heard that the most vocal opponents of this, besides the FCO, were groups of people within another, less-known alliance called the CCC, and he gravitated towards them even though he was technically still a citizen of the FCO and was fighting on the side of The Initiative.
When war ended, he relocated to a Finnish CCC nation and lived there for two months, until he got wind of a movement that had started in Eastern European Russia to fight for the rights of all Uralics. He was caught up in this movement and found himself moving to Syktyvkar, which was at the time a "burning pit of racial tension." It was then that he was introduced to Christianity, by Matti Koppinen, one of the early members of the Uralic Evangelical Baptist movement. He converted a month later, and became one of the earlier "faces" of the movement, before the addition of Ovdey Shlomov, Jarkko Salomäki, and Lasse Mäkelä to the roster later in the year.
Salomäki in particular had a fondness for Jyrki's music and encouraged him to use it to convey a message as the movement grew. Many Uralican composers could capture some of what went on around the area at the time in their music, but none more so than Koistinen, whose underground industrial and dark ambient projects were one of many things that drew more people to the Uralicist cause.
Russian supremacists had largely left the area by October of 2007, due to the Unjust War and backlash from the Uralic Purges from various sources. With the threat of violence seemingly gone, Koistinen set to work on his first full studio album using a relatively intact recording studio in Syktyvkar. Finished in December of 2007, it was called Jokainen on kipeä ("Everyone is hurt") and was heralded as one of the best dark ambient albums of the Robertian Era.
He was not overtly involved in the riots of 2 March, but he was a key proponent of the Three-Day Revolution after the fact. The remarkable show of faith and ethnic solidarity was instrumental in both the foundation of Uralica and that nation's inevitable entry into the CCC.
After Uralica's foundation and initial expansion, he moved to Emva, where he lives during his time away from teaching. He was one of the first honorary doctorates of Uralikan Yliopisto, and this bestowment allowed him to teach engineering. He also continues to make music, and is planning to take summer trimesters off teaching to work on a BMus at Epiphany National Conservatory. Because of his schedule, his work is very sporadic, and has said he doesn't expect to release a third album until the fall of 2010.
He is a very successful non-fiction author in the realm of computers and computer music, having secured publishing almost immediately when one of his fellow Uralicists, Maxim Chaykovsky, opened up Uralica's first publishing firm. He teaches in his books, but in a very light-hearted and often humorous manner. He also published a hilarious book of computer music bloopers called "How Not To Build A Virtual Studio," in which he takes the mick out of many people, including himself.
Discography[]
Albums[]
December 2007 - Jokainen on kipeä (dark ambient, 8 tracks)
March 2008 - Old Stuff: The Koistinen Archives 1996-2006 (various genres, 2 CDs, total of 22 tracks)
March 2008 - Sculpting Sound (symphonic electronica, 5 tracks)
August 2008 - Redemption Of The Human Pincushion (industrial techno/EBM, 9 tracks)
July 2009 - Tear It Out And Throw It In The Fire (industrial techno/EBM, 11 tracks)
September 2009 - Futurist (symphonic electronica, 6 tracks)
Singles[]
January 2008 - In The Deep (dark ambient, from Jokainen on kipeä)
March 2008 - Freedom (symphonic electronica, from Sculpting Sound)
March 2008 - Miksi? ("Why?", industrial techno, from Old Stuff: The Koistinen Archives 1996-2006)
May 2008 - Weltsfurcht ("Fear Of The World," EBM, from Old Stuff: The Koistinen Archives 1996-2006)
June 2008 - Ikuisuus ("Eternity," dark ambient, from Jokainen on kipeä)
July 2008 - Riemuvoitto ("Triumph," symphonic electronica, from Sculpting Sound)
August 2008 - Sotamme ("Our War", EBM, from Old Stuff: The Koistinen Archives 1996-2006)
September 2008 - An Immoral Peace (industrial techno, from Redemption Of The Human Pincushion)
December 2008 - Black (EBM, from Redemption Of The Human Pincushion)
February 2009 - Redemption Of The Human Pincushion (industrial techno, from Redemption Of The Human Pincushion)
May 2009 - Implosion (EBM, from Redemption Of The Human Pincushion)
May 2009 - Olemme Vapaa ("We Are Free," industrial techno, from Old Stuff: The Koistinen Archives 1996-2006)
July 2009 - Wrong (industrial techno, from Tear It Out And Throw It In The Fire)
September 2009 - Heathendom (EBM, from Tear It Out And Throw It In The Fire)
October 2009 - The Nenetsian Tundra (symphonic electronica, from Futurist)
Bibliography[]
- 12 Simple Steps To Making Computer Music - published May 2008 by Maxim Chaykovsky Publishing, Syktyvkar.
- The Physics Of Music - published May 2008 by Maxim Chaykovsky Publishing, Syktyvkar.
- Virtual Studio Technology For The Total N00b - published August 2008 by Maxim Chaykovsky Publishing, Syktyvkar.
- Technology: Can't Live With It, Don't Have A Job Without It - published August 2008 by Maxim Chaykovsky Publishing, Syktyvkar.
- How Not To Build A Virtual Studio - published March 2009 by Maxim Chaykovsky Publishing, Syktyvkar.
- The Basics Of Building A GOOD Computer - published May 2009 by Maxim Chaykovsky Publishing, Syktyvkar.