“Human Nature is inspired by a visit to an exhibition of the same name that was held at the ethnographical museum in my hometown Stockholm, Sweden back in the summer of 2021. As I look upon this album, it is a soundtrack to accompany you as you walk through the exhibition.

In the spirit of the message, all proceeds from this album will be donated to WWF and their work to lessen the footprint humanity is leaving behind.

Each track of the album is based around information that stayed with me long after the first visit. For those interested, these are notes for a deeper understanding of the background:

Microscopic Algae

Oxygen is a necessity for life, something plants make, but we have less and less of these around on land. But in the oceans, there’s microscopic algae that are great at creating oxygen. Research is now done to find a way for us humans to recreate algae like these to be able to compensate for the shortage of oxygen we created. The sounds of the track moves from underwater to up on land and back again.

Keystone Species

We have Species that are more important to nature around them than others, these are called keystone species. One of these are the wolf which is an often-debated animal here in my native Sweden. There’s many that want them completely gone. When wolves where reintroduced into Yellowstone back in 1995 after 70 years without them, the reintroduction caused unanticipated change in Yellowstone's ecosystem and even its physical geography. It rebalanced elk and deer populations, allowed the willows and aspen to return to the landscape. It ended the overgrazing stabilized riverbanks, so that rivers recovered and flowed in new directions. Songbirds returned as did beavers, eagles, foxes and badgers. Listen closely and you might hear wolves sneaking through vegetation.

Amaranth

Amaranth is a plant with high nutritional value and protein, that grow easy and need little water in comparison with many other plants to grow. Today amaranth is often looked upon as a weed that infest soya plantations. Soya needs lots of water, time and space specially prepared for it, as an opposite to amaranth. So amaranth causes problems for the farmers. I wanted to make something that was just out of sync, just as the whole situation with soya and amaranth.

Boehmeria Nivea

Boehmeria Nivea is the Latin name for Ramie, a plant in the nettle family. One of the ways it can be used is to make fabric. It doesn’t take much water to grow and are therefore a good example of a plant that could be used instead of cotton. Even if you buy ecological cotton that has no chemicals in its production, it will take between 2200 and 6500 gallons of water to grow one kilo of cotton. That’s why we need to find alternatives to cotton. In the song I’ve tried to create a fabric of sounds by using echoes.

Kintsugi Pt.1 and 2

Kintsugi is an old Japanese technic of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum. I find we are too focused today on buying new things, instead of repairing and reusing what is old and/or broken. The two tracks are strictly speaking remixes of tracks made by Bolivian Fireships. I broke the tracks into small fragments of stems and mended them together again, mending the areas of breakage with drums.

Potlatch

As in a giving economy. Where people give others of what they have or produce, based on that others need it. Not as in a trade based in the value it could accumulate, but because this will benefit us as a community. In a giving economy I give with the faith that others will do the same for me to cover my needs. To create this track, I turned to some friends I admire and asked them if they would consider giving me a stem file of their choice for me to take ownership of and use in the track. What I could offer in return was that I’ll help them with whatever they needed, whenever they needed it, as best I could. This would also apply even if they didn’t have anything for me.

The Marshall Islands

Because of global warming and the ocean slowly rising, the Marshall Islands are slowly getting swallowed by the ocean. This have resulted in that more and more of the population have turned away from the more modern society and started living by older technics, sustainable methods and knowledge to have less negative effect on nature. To create this track, I turned to the first ever method I used to make drum tracks (an app called Figure) and mixed it up with instruments I could find around the house that do not use electricity.

Traditional Indigenous Forms of Knowledge

I am not against development, there’s many things that is effective and good in general with new technology. Take the mobile phone which I use to record all my music. The possibilities of use that a mobile phone has covers hundreds of things that we no longer need and therefore won’t produce in the same amount anymore. Telephones, calculators, newspapers, bankbooks, clocks, even instruments sometimes and so on… that doesn’t mean we need a new mobile every year though.
But with all that’s new, there’s also those needed that say no and ask questions like why. Why should we do like this, why can’t we do like we used to? These persons are needed, to that hold us back, forces us to stop for a while and most of all makes us think.
In the background you can hear a metal ball rolling through a never-ending loop from a toy museum here in Stockholm. The ever-rolling ball got to represent humanity and the constant need to move forward, no mater what. Maybe it’s time we take control over the journey and make more conscious decisions for where we are heading?”

Jonas Geiger Ohlin
The New Emphatic
January 2, 2023