writen by Marko Jakob | 08.03.2022 |
Pix666: Hello Aleksi. Thanks for your time. How are you doing these days?
Aleksi: Hello! Glad to be interviewed by you. I’m doing great! Writing new material and enjoying family life in peace. I’m also playing live guitar for my friend (Nicholas X, Sony Music Finland/Monopoli Music) which is exciting!
Pix666: Aleksi, your band Balboa Son is still quite new and there is not much information on the internet. Please tell the readers who you are, where you come from and what kind of music your band makes.
Aleksi: With pleasure! Balboa Son hails from Finland and the music is a fresh blend of all things rock, metal, alternative and such. Modern rock, modern metal, metalcore, alternative metal are genres that come to mind but I try not to limit the project to anything too rigidly. But the basic foundation is definitely in the realm of rock and metal.
Pix666: Is Balboa Son a band or your solo project?
Aleksi: Balboa Son is currently my solo project, but I do toy with the idea of having a live band to perform with. I do have a shortlist of people I can call regarding the live setting, but in the studio it’s just me. Might even stay that way even when there’s a solid backing, who knows. I definitely enjoy the control.
Pix666: What was the trigger for you to become a musician?
Aleksi: My brother used to play bass in an alternative band, back in the early 2000s. That definitely had an impact, also the music he listened to back then influenced me quite a bit. Korn, System of a Down, Deftones, Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Cradle of Filth (CoF was especially huge for me) and all sorts of stuff from that era. While my own taste was pretty bland back then, it definitely shaped the outcome of what was later to be. When I got my first mp3 player when I was in the 3rd grade, he had put 10-15 songs on it. Stuff like Chimaira, Diablo, Misfits, Turmion Kätilöt and such. I do remember having a Sonic soundtrack CD and it had a song called “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Dub” by Apollo 440 (the song sampled the intro riff of “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” by Van Halen, which would occur to me way later than I’d like to admit…). That one really got me hooked on guitar.
Pix666: Were you active in other bands before, or were or are you otherwise active in the music business?
Aleksi: I’ve been playing in bands ever since I was 10 years old, so back in 2006. I got a guitar in 2003 and then drums a few years later. First “serious” band came around in 2008 when I was 12. That was a heavy/power/melodeath band in which I first handled the vocals (with no proper experience before). I saw an ad in a Finnish music site muusikoiden.net, where they were looking for a vocalist and a bassist. I applied for the bass player role but they told me it had already been filled, and asked if I would be interested in the vocalist position. I said yes and figured it out later!
There’s been numerous bands and projects since then. I also got interested in the recording and production aspect of music when we were in a studio recording our first demo with the aforementioned first band in 2009, so I’ve been juggling that hat on my head as well pretty much since then. I focused on mixing/mastering etc and graphic designing for bands for a few years, something like 2014-2017. I rarely do graphics for anyone else besides myself these days but I do regularly mix a project or two every now and then.
Pix666: What is the background of your band name – how did it come about?
Aleksi: I was in the process of writing the songs which came to be the “Ghost Fog” EP. Actually I had already done all the tracks I thought were gonna be on the EP, but then I was rewatching Rocky Balboa from 2006. I got super inspired by the movie (as with every Rocky movie, you just want to conquer the world after watching one) and wrote the song ‘Balboa Son’ in pretty much one sitting. The lyrics followed on the same day with finishing touches on the next. Balboa Son came from the lyrics and title of the song, almost a year later.
The project was named Fight Forever while writing the EP and when I was setting up a plan to get it released (the EP was written and recorded in spring/early summer 2020 but the first song came out in August 2021). Me and my friend Otto Knuutila, (who makes great indie music as the artist Took) who handled the release through Soundhill Music discussed the project title and came to the realization that Fight Forever wasn’t going to cut it. While I did enjoy that title which I lifted from one of my all time favorites Disco Ensemble (their final album had a song with the same title), I had already toyed with the idea of putting Balboa Son as the band name as well.
Pix666: Last year your first songs and the EP ‘Ghost Fog’ were released – how were the reactions to the songs so far?
Aleksi: The reaction has been great! The debut single and title song “Balboa Son” has enjoyed steady success. It was featured on several playlists. One named Adrenaline Workout has almost 1,4 million likes and the song has enjoyed a place there for quite a bit. Funny thing about the song was that I wasn’t going to include it on the EP. When I wrote it, I sent it to a few friends and they all pressured me to include it on the EP. I’m glad that I listened as it is nearing almost 200k streams on Spotify as we speak. The rest of the songs have had less streaming success but they do find listeners slowly and steadily as well. I’m really excited to release new material as soon as possible.
Pix666: I saw you already have more than 20k listeners per month on Spotify. Do you look at all these statistics?
Aleksi: I mainly check the per month listeners and stats about the individual songs. Every now and then I request further statistics from Otto but I don’t stress too much about the data. I’m just glad that someone is listening to my music and enjoys it!
Pix666: How important is social media for you and where are you represented?
Aleksi: Social media in general is less of a focus in my private life but it has a place for Balboa Son. I think that social media is quite relevant for a musician/band/artist these days as for everyone else in those sorts of areas. I don’t have too much presence on Facebook but I do try to have a relevant page on Instagram. That’s my social media of choice and seems to be for many of my peers as well. I caught the final waves of Myspace as well with the first band I was in, but social media is a different beast altogether these days. Time will tell if I need to increase my social media presence but as for now things seem to be good as they are.
Pix666: What will happen with Balboa Son in the future? Are you writing new songs and will there be an album soon?
Aleksi: I’m writing new material constantly! The “Ghost Fog” EP was pretty much ancient to me when it was released as I had sat on it for over a year, and two of the songs (Ghost Fog and Back Home) were older songs that I really wanted to do for a long time. I think that the next release won’t be an album but also an EP or just a collection of singles. I do want to release an album as well but with things these days, it might not be the best way to go.
Pix666: Let’s talk a little bit about your songs. How do you create your songs and what themes are the lyrics of your songs about?
Aleksi: I try to write my songs to be single material in themselves. As in, I don’t tend to write stuff for Balboa Son that wouldn’t work as a single. I want the songs to stand out by themselves as that seems to be really important these days. I don’t follow a rigid method of writing songs with a hit in mind or anything like that, but how I write these days seems to be really single-driven to the point that it comes out naturally, rather than by forcing it. With the lyrics it’s always something personal, something from my life or from the lives of those around me. Balboa Son is definitely the most personal project I’ve had. I do enjoy writing other music of course, more conceptual stuff and less apparent structures. Those songs stray far from Balboa Son as they might dabble in death metal, prog, black metal etc.
Pix666: Another question – after Blind Channel last year, Finland is sending The Rasmus to the ESC this year. How important is the UMK/ESC in Finland – how many people watch it on TV?
Aleksi: I think that UMK has enjoyed more support and backing now than before in time. I don’t know accurate numbers but when UMK was still ongoing, that was all that could be seen in Instagram stories and other media etc. The Rasmus was a big band for me when I was 7, I must admit… While we’re admitting stuff, I actually worked with Blind Channel in their early days. I mixed and mastered their songs “Calling Out” and “Naysayers”. I was in the process of mixing “Unforgiving” and some other songs when we had a falling out.
Everyone was young then and maybe some egos were bruised then but to my mind it’s water under the bridge as it was years ago (2014 maybe?). But the funny thing was when they released their song “Balboa” pretty much a month before I released my song “Balboa Son”. I can’t claim to have influenced them and to be honest they definitely didn’t influence me as I don’t follow them all too closely, but behind the scenes I was in contact with their then-label Ranka Kustannus back in 2020 when I had finished the EP. I was looking for a label for Fight Forever and sent it to Riku from Ranka Kustannus among others and he enjoyed it a lot, namely ‘Balboa Son’.
We chatted for a bit and I passingly mentioned the collaboration I had had with his protegés in the past, and then he stopped writing to me altogether. Fast forward a bit over a year forward and two bands with a minimal connection release songs almost by the same lyrical theme and title with no knowledge of the other (at least I had 0% knowledge of them going to release a song with that title etc) except their “boss” knowing about my project and my song. Most likely it is all just a small/big coincidence or so I’d like to think, definitely didn’t have any sort of impact on my project as I was just coming up. I got like a message or two asking about the relevance or similarity but that was it.
Pix666: Aleksi, do you have some – typically Finnish – hobbies? Here in Central Europe they say that ice swimming, drinking alcohol, ice hockey and sauna are a must for Finnish men 😊.
Aleksi: Well I do have a sauna, so that is in frequent use. I’ve gone ice swimming for a couple of times in my life so that’s not a hobby of mine. I used to play hockey for a few years (intensely debating about being either a rock star or a hockey player as a dramatic 11-year old…) but I don’t find myself watching it too much. Drinking isn’t playing a part in my life currently, but I don’t have a zero tolerance on the subject. Maybe some nice wine if I reach a million streams…
Pix666: Do you have any other news about Balboa Son, that you would like to share with the fans?
Aleksi: I’m still working on a music video or two as well as new songs! I’m looking to release new music ASAP and will definitely keep everyone posted on Instagram and such. Thanks for the interview! Much love from Finland. Stay well and enjoy life!
Pix666: Thank you very much for the interesting answers – Good luck for the future and stay healthy!!!
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photos © by Liisa Hotakainen
