Soul Corner

In the late Spring 1998 in Tampere, Finland, while still being a guitarist of Kotiteollisuus (Home Industry), Aki put a band together with a Canadian vocalist Leila Catherine Ronkainen (last name reflects her father's Finnish roots), bass player Ville Olkkonen and drummer Ari Toikka. Aki had been a long time exhausted with his feeling of being an "outsider" to Kotiteollisuus due to personal and musical disagreements especially with the lead singer Jouni Hynynen. After he met Leila through a common friend he thought that his long-term dream of a hard rock band with a female front figure could realize. Indeed, Aki had then some 20 pretty fresh songs he thought were more suitable for female vocals than male ones. 

While being out with Ville and Leila one night, after a couple of beers, the name "Nobodies" was selected for the band as an ironic response to many rock bands that behave in a high and mighty way without having done anything yet.

However, it took only a couple of weeks when Aki realized that the band was not lying on a firm ground, because Ville didn't seem to share the same understanding about band's style than Aki, and even more, because Ari was a professional drummer and extremely busy by backing up many front-row musicians of Finland. Band rehearsals became almost impossible to agree on. It was time to move on.

Within a couple of months the band took a new shape containing Henri Lievonen replacing Ville on bass. Henri was actually a guitar player himself, but agreed on playing bass, and he did it pretty well indeed. The group started to sound a real band pretty soon and everyone was excited about the future. Meanwhile Aki had left Kotiteollisuus, also to be able to concentrate better on his new band.

However, a major setback stroke out soon, since Ari was recruited by one of the most promising new groups, Bomfunk MC's, as a tour drummer. As music was his only income, he decided to leave the band, and he perhaps made a right move, since Bomfunk hit the European music charts by selling millions soon after him joining them.

In the late summer of '98 Aki asked Timo Vehmas, whose band had been sharing the same rehearsal room, to join the Nobodies. Timo (nickname "Timpa") was a great, improvising, Mitch Mitchell -type of a drummer, and a great guy! After a couple of months of rehearsals the band headed to a local Three Cowboys studio, which had at those times served as home basis for a band of a real rock and roll superstar, Michael Monroe (Hanoi Rocks). The studio sessions were full of enthousiasm and after 2 days of intensive recordings the first promo-CD "Nobodies" saw its daylight. The CD included three hard rock songs, "Another Round" (music by Aki, lyrics by Leila), "Dear Brother" (music by Aki, lyrics by Leila) and "So Cold" (music & words by Aki).

The promo-CD led to a couple of gigs and the band started to get name due to its tight and energetic playing and stage performances accompanied by powerful female vocals. The smooth cooperation between Leila, Henri, Timo and Aki had also been earned by regular and tireless rehearsals and by enthousiastic attitude of everyone.

Dating back to his years with Kotiteollisuus who were having a recording deal with a Finnish well-known label Megamania (ex-Love Records) Aki had created a good network of recording company personnel, gig promoters and front row musicians all over Finland. It was therefore relatively easy for him to give a call to the boss of Megamania, Mr. Atte Blom, and convince him to listen to the promo-CD of the Nobodies.

Aki and Leila took a train from Tampere to Helsinki (capital city of Finland) in the Autumn 1998 and they had a meeting with Mr. Blom and the marketing director of Megamania. Atte's comment after the opening track "Another Round" of the three-track promo was "impressive, very impressive". By the same token he proposed that the band makes a CD -single by the end of the year under the label of Megamania. However, there was one condition: the name of the band needed to change, since Atte thought it to be "too modest". Aki and Leila had controversial thoughts about it for a while, but the change was perhaps easier, because it was the ex-Nobodies, Ville, who had proposed the name. "Nanaimo Bars" was selected as a new name for the band, based on a suggestion by Leila. The name "Nanaimo" derives from native Americans in Canada, and it is a small city close to Vancouver...the home town of Leila. "Nanaimo Bars" is a brand name for famous cookies manufactured in that area...for the rest of the band it was indeed a nice combination of "something extraordinary and something related to freetime..."

Soon after the meeting at Megamania's headquarters Nanaimo Bars started recording sessions of three songs at the Happy Road Studios in Tampere. Those songs were "Double Dare" (words by Leila, music by Aki), "A Little Love Song" (words & music by Aki) and "Don't Tell Me" (words & music by Aki). The recording engineer and producer was the ex-drummer of the Nobodies, Ari Toikka, who was asked to take over the job, because he knew the band and its music already.

The single was marketed in Finland, Canada, Belgium and Japan and it led to several performances and growing amount of audiences in Tampere and Helsinki. One of the biggest and most succesful performances was a warm-up for HIM at Tammerfest, a music festival having some 100 000 audience.

During that time the band was in a real good shape and it felt that "only heaven is a border for a huge success".

In the late Autumn 1998, when all gates seemed to be open for a major success, personal problems started to take over. Aki was suffering from a deteriorated relationship where his girlfriend of that time was furiously jealous about him cooperating closely with Leila. Accompanied by an increased tension between Aki and Leila, due to Leila's wishes to include more of her compositions into the band's set, the band was very close to break up in the early 1999. Neither Aki nor Henri could agree on the new turn, because Leila's songs were more or less typical American "female-songwriter" compositions, whereas Aki and Henri were more enthousiastic about alternative metal type of approach.

Regardless of their problems Nanaimo Bars continued performing and recorded a demo in early Spring 1999 at the Happy Road Studio (again engineered by Ari Toikka) containing 14 songs out of which the first album was supposed to be constructed. Soon after the demo sessions TT Weasel (ex-Pushrods) started to play bass and Henri took over the second guitar. TT was drummer Timpa's good friend, a technically talented bass player, and commited to a hard rock approach. However, the new composition did not work as well as the previous one and the then already quite quarrelsome band finally broke up in the summer of 1999. The "goodbyes" were celebrated in front of a full audience at a famous restaurant Telakka in Tampere. After the succesful final gig Leila tried to persuade Aki and Henri to continue with the band. However, after recognizing this was impossible, she moved back to Vancouver, Canada.

Being heavily disappointed with the break up of Nanaimo Bars, Aki established already during the summer a new band ATM with his Nanaimo colleague Timo Vehmas on drums and his old friend Marko Roiha on bass. The name ATM came from the first letters of the forenames of the musicians. ATM recorded its first self-produced CD "Invisible" at Aki's home studio in the Autumn. It was somehow strange how good the band sounded immediately without major practising-after all those intensive months of rehearsing, performing and recording with Nanaimo Bars. Indeed, Marko lived then, and still does, in the eastern part of Finland and Aki and Timo lived in a western city, Tampere, 300 km away from Marko. Therefore, the band rehearsals were actually rehearsals between Aki and Timo, whereas Marko learnt the songs mainly by listening to the demos that Aki and Timo sent him and he joined the band for the recording sessions.

In the late 1999 the second ATM CD "Light of Love", containing Aki's most sentimental songs, saw its daylight. 

Due to his PhD studies Aki moved to the legendary German capital city in February 2000, which gave him distance to the disappointments of 1999. That was a good move considering his academic career and it also inspired him to compose new songs, which were heavier by tune and perhaps more straight by structure than his previous ones. However, the year 2000 turned to be emotionally the hardest time of Aki's life so far. He found himself more than often playing guitar alone in his flat in ex-East Berlin (next to legendary Alexanderplatz), but also having questionable freetime activities. Songs such as "CRAP!", "Mystery", "Angel" and "Bleeding" are composed during the Berlin year and they are heavily reflecting Aki's feelings of that time.

Upon Aki's return from Berlin to Tampere in March 2001 ATM activated itself for a new recording session containing 6 songs and the recordings led to a self-produced CD "Songs of Joy and Sorrow", for which the recordings and mixing were completed in September 2001.

ATM stayed inactive after Songs of Joy and Sorrow for one and half years, due to the band members' private-life-issues, but in June 2003 Aki, Timo and Marko started new recordings leading to a CD titled "Stay", which was completed in Autumn. "Stay" differed from the previous ATM recordings, because for the first time the lead vocals were taken over by an "outsider" who was Aki's friend, a Helsinki based composer-guitarist-vocalist Juha Jaakkola. Upon those times Aki requested Juha to join ATM permanently and he considered to change the name of the band to be "Soul Corner" for the first time. Unfortunately, although enjoying the recording sessions, Juha was not interested in joining any rock bands and he was more willing to continue composing music for musicals performed in local theaters.

In June 2004 Aki moved to Istanbul, Turkey, to teach at a local university and to work as a freelance consultant concerning EU and World Bank funded education projects in Turkey and close areas. At the same time, Aki started to make remixes of ATM songs including different "guests" and started to use the name "Soul Corner" to describe his music independent of fellow musicians participating in the recording sessions.

ATM's/Soul Corner's music was published on internet as mp3 files in the latter part of 2004 and they became gradually available at three US -based, one Australian -based and two Finnish -based music websites, which has given a new rise for the band who were previously recording mainly for themselves. Since October 2004 the songs performed by Soul Corner have been downloaded by tens of thousands of people all over the world and the reviews so far have been promising.

Year 2005 introduced vocalist Izzi the Snake who gradually took over the lead vocals of Soul Corner.

Soul Corner started to record their first longplay "Twilight Report" in Autumn 2005 and the cd came out in March 2006. The recordings were done in two different countries (Finland and Turkey) and in two different cities (in Finland: Kerava and Tampere and in Turkey: Istanbul). This all was possible mainly due to internet (yes, you can send the wav. files from a place to another and continue recording anywhere you like!).

During the recordings, Izzi the Snake gradually became a permanent band member and Aki was able to concentrate on guitars, background vocals and producing. However, Aki's long-term friend Marko Roiha left the band in July 2006, just after the cd had come out . He was soon replaced by TT Weasel, Aki's and Timpa's bandmember from Nanaimo Bars. Indeed, TT already had played bass tracks for half of the songs of Twilight Report.

The cd was an independent publication, meant for promoting, and it was first on sale in Finland and in Turkey. However, starting from June 2006 the cd has been sold by the Record Office. The cd has also been promoted by the internet-based Last.fm.

Recordings for Soul Corner's next album "Partners in Crime" started in August 2006.