We recently met up with Stockholm DJ and producer Jani Avalon to talk about his work.
Jani Kinnunen, or Jani Avalon as he calls himself professionally, was born and raised in Stockholm with Finnish roots.
He got started with music early on in his life, back in 1998 at an after-school programme at a youth community center. Jani started deejaying and one of his teachers was working at the same place, so he was eager to learn. Since then he has been deejaying around Stockholm, but also in Finland, Estonia and the US.
He started making his own music back in 2006-2007, and his first release was around 2011 when he really got into music production. Jani started with hip hop and r’n’b, but has also been doing pop and house music.
Jani Avalon’s latest own releases include a single last year with an artist (and co-producer) named Jonth – a song called Sthlm. And in February this year they released another new track called Curve. The style is electronic dance music and the tracks have been released through Sony Music Sweden.
Jani also runs an independent label called Octave Music Group, which he says means plenty of work. He manages, produces, writes songs, and does pretty much everything else. The label is currently working with launching a new pop and urban artist called Melina Leiva. He is also working with new tracks for Jonth right now.
As an independent label, you have to do everything by yourself. You need to make connections, you need to open new doors. It’s a lot of work and hours that you have to put in.
To be able to present a final product to the world, it really takes nights and days to get where you want to go.
