Do you know Glayden? What Helsinki has given the singer, songwriter, and live performer is an intensity forged in front of famously tough crowds. As he steps out toward bigger markets, the many personas of his singles and EPs are coming together into one world. Ahead of the DIY x WTF Showcase at The Old Blue Last in London on 19 November, the question is how those layers will reveal themselves that night. He is ready for the bigger stage.

This May, Glayden played the Finale of the second Helsinki Music Week at Tanssin talo, a festival built to bring Helsinki's lively but little-seen underground to the forefront. Seeing him on that stage felt like a snapshot of his current momentum, an artist carrying the city's underground out into the world.

From gabber to gated reverb

These days, Glayden's solo work leans less on the gabber of Helsinki Hardcore, his duo project with Paul Seul, and more on the 1980s. Still, his Mad Decent Presents: Glayden mix on Apple Music says just as much about him: a blend of Burial's "Ghost Hardware" and Ice Spice's "In Ha Mood" that slides straight into Madonna's "Sky Fits Heaven." That knack for pulling unlikely sounds into his own orbit is his signature, and it feels like the core of who he is as a musician.

"We've been listening to a lot of The Cars, for example, a lot of old Madonna," he says.

"The instrumentation draws heavily from the '80s, but style-wise and mood-wise it's maybe more related to older Finnish metal — bands like HIM and Children of Bodom."

What clicked was how "these really dramatic, melancholic compositions work really well with the drums you hear in old '80s tracks, with the gated reverbs."

Traces are already audible on "Sarah Jessica Parker," "Gin & Tonic" and "Creep."

Three lanes into one world

Turning disparate tastes and textures into something his own has taken layers of time, along with years of performing around the world. Across three EPs, Belief Systems, GoGetter and Piano Man, Glayden worked through years of stockpiled ideas, one lane per record: club tracks, rap-leaning songs and drumless ballads.

"We got through all of the good ideas from the past and did our best with them, in three different lanes," he says. Next comes the work of bringing those lanes together.

"Melancholic euphoria, I would say, is a pretty descriptive term"

The project he is immersed in now is meant for listening at home rather than in the club, he says, though a few tracks are built to work in a club setting too.

"Even if it's a two-hour prog house set, I always love to bring in a bit of a curveball song," he says, and that instinct comes from pride in his city:

"Now that I've been around and seen the club scenes of other places, I must say it's crazy how good it is back home."

Asked for the thread running through it all, he lands on two words.

"Melancholic euphoria, I would say, is a pretty descriptive term."

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Playing Finland on expert mode

As recognition has grown, touring Europe has brought its own surprises for Glayden.

"You go to a small town in Italy, and someone's familiar with your music — I still haven't gotten used to that."

Even so, the real training ground is home.

"If you perform in Finland, you really go through the performance in expert mode," he says.

"The audience here is pretty hard. They're really demanding."

Finnish crowds need a drink or two before they let go, and getting them roaring with excitement takes real work, whether it's a live show or a DJ set. The upside is honesty:

"If you perform in Finland, you really go through the performance in expert mode"

"If someone is going crazy, you know they're actually really into it."

Next to festivals like Roskilde, where that kind of excitement is simply the standard, he calls the Finnish way "a double-edged sword."

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Because He’s never alone

Nor does he go through that process alone. He releases independently through BELOW0, the label he runs with close friends Dante Correa, Pau Kraus and Rasmus Purola, and in the studio he always works with the same producers: Niko Demus, inter alia and MFM. Glayden calls it all "a big family of sorts."

"I could be all alone just making music," he says. "Now I'm never alone."

At the showcase, Glayden shares the bill with Us and MALLA, and he's planning a live set of unreleased and recent tracks. For an artist who has come through expert mode at home, London should feel like an open door, to an encounter with the unknown and to the music lovers who come looking for one.

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