2024
Espoo City

New Year’s celebration spectacle in Espoo City
Concept: Tomi Flyckt / Muheva Concept
Sound Design and Music: Viljami Lehtonen
Video Design: Rajupaja

I was invited to compose the original music and design the sound for Espoo City’s New Year celebration 2025. In recent years, Espoo has replaced its traditional fireworks with a different kind of spectacle each year—an environmentally conscious decision aimed at reducing both noise and air pollution. In 2024, the city presented a video mapping show projected onto the facade of its cultural building.

The theme was “Window to the Future.” The concept, developed by visual artist Tomi, featured a robot trying to start a party—but something goes wrong, and the celebration collapses. The robot then time-travels into the future to collect enough energy to revive the party. A simple idea with room for bold, creative expression.

This project was different from my usual work: I had to compose and sound design the entire piece before seeing any moving images. Normally, sound comes in at the end, once the visuals are finalized. At this point, Tomi had only created some reference stills—no animation yet, and no locked timing.

To solve this, we agreed to set the tempo at 129 BPM and construct the animation on a musical grid, so the visual transitions would sync tightly with the music. This allowed us to lock the timecode early and gave me a framework to work within.

Tomi originally envisioned a retro-futuristic vibe, which guided my initial sketches. But as the theme was quite literally about moving into the future, I ended up leaning into a more modern, electronic sound. Finally, I had the chance to put my electronic dance music production skills to use: I crafted a pumping beat, added some acid-inspired synth leads, and created a rhythmically energetic score that fit the story arc.

It was fun—but also strange—to produce a winter-themed show in the middle of summer. I was slightly anxious about how it would translate to a large outdoor space with big speakers, especially since there was no time for a full soundcheck the day before. But everything went smoothly—and the best moment was seeing kids already dancing during the soundcheck.

The spectacle was shown 10 times on New Year’s Eve, reaching an estimated 20,000 people.

Unfortunately, due to copyright limitations, I can’t share the video—but below, you can listen to the full audio track.