I’ve arrived at Toinen Kerros early, as I have been given the task of documenting the concert. To be precise, making a video documentation. So as a disclaimer you are reading a review from the perspective of second-order observation. 

Before stepping in, a cheerful notice advertising the concert greets me outside, “ANOTHER LAYER” preceded by two slightly out of phase waves upon which the names of the performers hang and bob. Beneath this, a guitar.

A skip upstairs reveals the familiar industrial Toinen Kerros, which is bathed in “Love Hotel Red” hot-pink light. After knocking to announce my arrival, I’m greeted by Lauri Hyväninen; concert series organiser and performer, and notice that this colour saturates skin and darkens features to the point of unrecognisability.

Haiyun Yu is doing a little sound check, with her 12-string guitar set up so I take my chance to find a good vantage point from which to record the concert. As I fiddle with the camera and enjoy the delicate sound of the 12-string, Lauri introduces me to Daniel M Karlsson who has appeared from behind. To meet a new face under these lighting conditions is slightly uncanny. Daniel asks if when I record their set, could I not record his face in particular, as he prefers to be somewhat anonymous online. 

With everything ready, I’m just sitting in the audience waiting for the show. The slow drip of audience begins, and by 19:00 most of the seats are filled by TK regulars and newcomers alongside them. The red light hangs an air of anticipation in the air.

Lauri stumbles out of an introductory speech as quickly as he stumbled into it, it’s casual and funny. Haiyun Yu takes to the stage and invites us to:

“…listen to the sounds between the notes…”

And thus starts the concert with Jiang Kui’s Nine Songs of Yue. 

The pieces consist of meandering pentatonic-like melodies played exclusively with harmonics and open strings. The meander is nothing like randomness however, thanks to the instruction beforehand one can enjoy the work as an exploration of resonances, turning the otherwise “straight” phrasing of the tones into excitations of various proportions like ripples across a body of water. These small sound events are delicate and ephemeral, so sink quickly down below the surface, hiding away. 

In this rendition I imagine tossing stale bread to the duck pond, the particles hanging for a moment then quickly absorbing water and sinking down.

Having written about this beforehand, I would suggest the interested reader to check the article for a more in-depth discussion of the piece itself. 

Of note in this performance, the audience is still and careful not to make a single sound. The piece’s quietness has demanded concentration from us, and we have all stepped in line for it.  

After the ten tunes have passed, we take a short break. A delicate mood permeates through this down time and we greet and chat to each other in hushed voices. As Lauri and Daniel make moves toward the stage, where their minimal setup of two electric guitars on two tables has so far gone unnoticed. We move back to our seats.

 

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For the next 40-or-so minutes we are submerged into a torrent of sound; drones envelop the room from the first moment until the last, being felt in our bones and lungs as well as the very architecture of the building. 

It is hard to describe much more than that from this performance, it is certainly a type of experience that happens to you rather than something you seek to find meaning in. Karlsson and Hyvärinen’s duo manifests in a kind of sonic egregore – every small adjustment and attunement influencing the other, and pushing the sound in unpredictable ways. In this sense, I’m not too sure if control factors into it. Before the Concert, I inquired if there was some kind of score they will be following, “Well, as much as a setup can be a score itself.”, they answer.

In a key moment, roughly 10 minutes into the set, a particular frequency sets the windows (to the right of the audience) into a frenzy. It feels either like a huge pressure is building up from the outside and about to burst in, or that some invisible force is passing through. One of the few moments in which either Daniel or Lauri look away from their setups, they tilt their heads back almost as if welcoming this force with glee. 

It is almost unimaginable that simply two guitars played by e-bows can produce such an enormous and deep sound; Later, the trick was enthusiastically revealed to us by Daniel, who explained it is simply a pair of ring-modulators which the guitars are running through.

“You should try it yourselves guys, it’s that simple!” He urges all of us who have wandered over to inspect by what means the guitars were manipulated. To the untrained eye, as my own, it is a small black box with knobs on it. No explanation, of either the technical setup nor the physical description of sound could ever convince me that this was anything but magic. 

I think an important distinction to make, is that the piece is not planned but rather an ephemeral glance of a larger (perhaps even infinite) form. From this perspective I can begin to enjoy the rash juxtaposition of this concert: Yu’s set, a fresh take on ancient material slowly sinking away below a volume of water, Hyvärinen and Karlsson’s was a submergence to the core – what was a small partition of water, is now felt as a whole river system.

After the concert, I head out to regard the poster once again, “ANOTHER LAYER” preceded by two slightly out of phase waves upon which the names of the performers bob and hang.

Having thought about the ancient to the infinite, the physical to the speculative, I’m not sure there exists a layer deeper than the ones explored.

 

ANOTHER LAYER

Concert #1
03.04.2026 | Toinen Kerros, Helsinki

Daniel M Karlsson & Lauri Hyvärinen: Electric guitars
Haiyun Yu: 12-string acoustic guitar