NAME: Santtu Pesonen
NATIONALITY: Finland
YEAR OF BIRTH: 1994
INSTRUMENTS: bass, drums, guitar, synthesizer, vocals
LIKES: beer, coffee, food, scifi stuff, video games
Hi. Nice to meet you.
Music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and the interest developed at a very young age. I was no older than 4 when I had my first drum lesson. The teacher tried to teach me some basics about drumming, but I just let it rip and nailed AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” right in front of the guy. I don’t mean to sound egotistical when I say this, but I think it was established right then and there that I was a special case.
I wrote my first song not much later, performing it at kindergarten. They didn’t have instruments, though, so I played it a cappella. I wrote the lyrics out onto a sheet of A4 paper, as well as some rudimentary notation for drums, guitar and bass on the other side. (That sheet doesn’t exist anymore – I tore it apart in my frustration over the other kids booing the song to oblivion, in case you were wondering.)
My love for music in its many forms continued to expand over the years, and it’s still expanding to this day. In addition to drums, I picked up guitar at the age of 15, shortly followed by bass. I started putting my love for singing into good use. I’ve continued writing songs, even going as far as to publish them under a variety of solo projects. And I went to a vocational school dedicated to the subject, from whence I graduated in November of 2020.
Out of my solo projects, The Santtu Pesonen Project is the longest-running one. Started in 2012, the 10 EPs I’ve released under the moniker span quite a variety of styles. It started in something that could probably be classified as heavy rock and/or alternative metal, and the project’s musical direction has steadily evolved more and more towards progressive metal. Not to mention the influences from other genres of music you can occasionally hear. And my other two solo projects, MFG38 and Hekkräiser, that are in completely different genres altogether.
Although I’ve already tackled a moderately wide range of music genres and styles across my solo projects, my desire to widen that range further doesn’t show any signs of stopping. There’s still so much of the musical landscape that I haven’t even discovered. And I love wandering in it.
Santtu Pesonen 