So here’s a cute but sad story to start the day. ‘Pihka’ is a small robot, the former imaginary friend of a boy who doesn’t want to have an imaginary friend anymore. Abandoned in a snow covered forest (it was particularly cruel to leave her there of all places), she ventures off on her own to find the city and there she finds the humans with all their crazy human problems. Think of a hybrid between ‘Toy Story’ and ‘Babe: Pig in the City’, only with a sweet fictitious robot, and you have the storyline.
Behind the story of ‘Pihka’ and their project Pihka is my Name are Finnish producers / musicians Henna Helasvuo (best known as a composer) and Lasse Turunen (producer), and ‘Binaries’ is their introductory track, although key to their release is also a video which has been created by visual artists Elli Maanpää and Jussi Turunen. To get the full effect then watch and listen together, although I’ve had the track on a personal playlist for a couple of weeks now, and chose it purely because it captured my imagination musically.
‘Binaries’ is a really clever, hypnotic track, with a distant cello creating an early atmospheric texture, before analogue electronics sweep the track forward and slowly crescendo as Pihka reaches the city. I really like this musically, probably influenced by some of the minimalist classical composers I grew up with, but also reminding me of Swedish project Valsaland that we’ve featured a few times in Nordic Music Review, as well as the likes of Four Tet.
Watch ‘Binaries'’ here: