Elena Mindru – Hybrid (2022) [FLAC 24 bit, 44,1 kHz]

Elena Mindru – Hybrid (2022) [FLAC 24 bit, 44,1 kHz]

Hybrid is Elena Mîndru’s first symphonic jazz album, a Hybrid of own compositions, carols, Romanian and Finnish songs.

10 years after her success in the Shure Montreux Jazz Voice Competition, when Quincy Jones himself, as head of the jury, awarded Elena both the 2nd Prize and the Public Prize, 10 years after the release of her first album – Romanian Christmas Stories, Elena comes back at the end of 2022 with a musical story that celebrates – through feelings and experiences concentrated in 9 pieces – her hybrid life as a Romanian artist living in Finland. A mixture of nostalgia for the home she left behind, of Romanian traditions, poetry reflecting a Nordic landscape, vulnerability, family, the reflection of her childhood values in a completely different space – all of these have found their expression in her first symphonic jazz album featuring her quartet and the Moldovan National Youth Orchestra.

Aki Yli-Salomäki – Jäi mieleen (2023) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]

Aki Yli-Salomäki – Jäi mieleen (2023) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]

Here I am. Immersed in moods, colors, wide open landscapes, states of mind. Solitude of our time, loneliness in the middle of urban crowds. These are some of the things, related to my existence, that I want to make audible in my music. No matter how hard I try to venture elsewhere, be something else, exist differently, there is always something that draws me back to myself, to my own personal experiencing and feeling self. This is something that I always carry within me, a tenacious scenery of thoughts, ideas and emotions. I try to make it sound. The outcome of the creative process often materializes as silent, floating and beatless music. Perhaps this spaciousness of musical texture and sound, as well as the strong contrasts between darkness and light in my music connote an aesthetic affiliation with Nordic countries or Northernness in general – both qualities that I personally embrace through my music.

Aki Yli-Salomäki is a Finnish composer and producer. His music has been described as “deep northern” slow-listening music manifested by grand sonority and soaring melodic arcs.​