Name: Miska Lamberg
Nationality: Finnish
Occupation: Sound artist, producer, composer, listener
Current release: Miska Lamberg's new album Evening, window is out via Dragon’s Eye.
Recommendations on the topic of sound:
Listen – Jeph Jerman in conversation with Adam Yardumiam was such a rewarding read on the topic of sound. It was so interesting to hear about Jerman’s – one of the greatest sound artists – thought and creative process. Then, Steve Roden’s website is an endless source of inspiration and full of interesting insight.  

If you enjoyed this Miska Lamberg interview and would like to stay up to date with their music, visit their official homepage. They are also on bandcamp.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

With music most of the time I listen with my eyes open. But when I’m outside, listening to forest for example, I like to close my eyes quite often.

While listening to music, I frequently feel like I’m being transported to a different place. This is the case especially with lots of ambient adjacent stuff. Quite static, atmospheric sounds leave space for my mind to wander, and I can imagine myself moving through familiar and unknown places alike.

And it’s not always a physical place. It can be a mental state as well.

How do listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?  

Couple years back I was absolutely fascinated by Ellen Arkbro’s album Sounds While Waiting.



First, I listened to it few times using only my headphones, then later I had a chance to play it on speakers, and I felt so stunned by the physicality of the sound and the fact that the sound was ever changing with the slightest head movements. That unlocked some kind of new experience for me.

[Read our Ellen Arkbro interview]

Very quiet music I usually like to listen to on my headphones so I can block out most of the external noises. Wearing headphones also offers some nice privacy and lets me get really intimate with an album in a way.

Tell me about some of the albums or artists that you love specifically for their sound, please.  

This list could be really long, but I’ll say Steve Roden and Kenny Segal.

Most of Roden’s work I’ve heard is awe-inspiring and the sound, the tones are often nice and soft to my ear and I love that. It could maybe be just that I like to listen to his work at a low volume as he intended. 



Where Roden’s music is best enjoyed quietly, Segal’s beats are best served out loud. There’s been so many times I’ve heard a rap song and I’ve been mesmerized by the beat and when I look up to who’s been credited as the producer, it’s most often Kenny Segal.

The drums, the samples, everything is knocking in a very distinctive Kenny Segal way. Kenstrumentals Vol. 4: a lot on my plate is such a mean collection of his beats. 



Few other artists I’d like to mention are Kali Malone, Sarah Davachi, Jeph Jerman, bedling, Masaya Kato, William Basinski and DJ Preservation.

[Read our William Basinski interview]
[Read our Sarah Davachi interview]
[Read our Sarah Davachi interview about her creative process]
[Read our creative profile of Kali Malone]

There can be sounds which feel highly irritating to us and then there are others we could gladly listen to for hours. Do you have examples for either one or both of these?  

I think I might be suffering from a somewhat severe case of misophonia. If someone is munching on food even a bit too loudly next to me, it drives me crazy. Well, it doesn’t really have to be loud at all haha.

Another example would be if I’m in class and other students are taking notes on their laptops … That drives me nuts.

As for something I could listen to for hours, I made this recording like a year or two ago when very light snow was softly falling on to a dry forest bed and the soundscape there was nothing short of magical. I’m so glad I was able to capture that moment as it didn’t last for very long.

Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?  

Libraries.

Usually, the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of libraries – rather than books – is probably that they’re quiet. In reality this is not the case at all, especially with public libraries. At least here in Helsinki there’s often quite a bit of people of all ages spending their time in libraries and when there’s younger people, kids and teenagers, there tend to be more sounds.

I feel like this contradiction in what you imagine a place would be or sound like leads you to listen in a certain way and for me, I listen to library spaces very intently whether they’re loud or quiet.

I’ve done field recordings in libraries quite a bit and Herttoniemi Library is one of the first things you can hear on my upcoming album Evening, window.



Have you ever been in spaces with extreme sonic characteristics, such as anechoic chambers or caves? What was the experience like?

Unfortunately, I’ve never had an opportunity to visit an anechoic chamber though I’d really like to.

I’ve been to many caves but can’t recall experiencing any of them in a way that would’ve felt sonically special. One place I remember sounding really stunning when I entered there was the St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.  

What are among your favourite spaces to record and play your music?

I definitely like to record at home. I need my own little private space for creative work. Most of the time when there’s someone around or I try to work with my friends I feel like nothing comes out of me or that I’m forcing myself too much to create, to come up with something.

I guess one of the reasons for that would be that I like to take my time listening and just sink into the sounds before starting to actually compose and when there’s other people around, I feel like I don’t really have the time for that.

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?  

Very much so.

I love working with found sounds and trying to always find new ways to manipulate them into something different. I get most inspired by just listening and when a sound gives me a feeling of some sort, I get to a state where I could start shaping it into a whole new world and try to give it a new meaning.

There have been a few times where I’ve had the opportunity to work with tape. Recording to it, splicing and rearranging it, all that stuff has felt really rewarding to me. Just the hands-on approach and working with physical media like that is so much fun.

How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?  

After moving to Helsinki few years ago, I’ve been trying to find an area to live in where the city doesn’t feel excessively noisy to me, and I think I’ve finally found it after moving to a new apartment with my partner couple months ago.  

As I used to work as a cook at various restaurants for many years, I realized that none of restaurant owners care about acoustics of their places. Restaurants are very noisy most of the time so you’d kind of think that maybe there should be some sound dampening going on but most of the time there isn’t.

I think that kind of noisy environment, together with other stuff in the restaurant industry, might be a big reason why so many seem to burn out.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds?  

The first thing that came to my mind was how emotional I got listening to Annea Lockwood’s A Sound Map of the Danube. I don’t really have the words to describe the experience, I just wish everyone would listen to it.

It’s kind of funny to use an example of recorded sound when there’s so many beautiful sounds around us every day. Maybe it’s just the context and intentionality of listening which makes the difference.

I must also mention the moment at the beginning of Spring when you first wake up to birds chirping!

Many animals communicate through sound. Based either on experience or intuition, do you feel as though interspecies communication is possible and important? Is there a creative element to it, would you say?   

I watched this Sonic Sea (2016) documentary a while back which focused largely on whale stranding and the effect of sound causing that type of behavior.



There’s so much high-volume noise coming from industrial and military machines and as sound travels very far in water, the documentary said that there’s a clear indication that whales are trying to escape the noise, which leads them to shallow water, and they end up being stranded. Really heartbreaking stuff.   

There was another part in the documentary in which people were trying to guide a whale out of shallow water back to the ocean. They tried many different tactics, but nothing seemed to work until they got an idea to put a speaker in the water and play sounds of whales singing and that way they were able to lure the whale back to open waters and find its friends.

That was a pretty creative solution in my opinion.

Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?  

I have had this high-pitched tone in my ears forever, but it was only few years back I realized it might be tinnitus after talking and asking friends if they have any constant noise going on in their head. Apparently not everyone has that.

I try to protect my hearing as well as I can these days. When working or listening to music I try to do that on relatively low volume – at times anything louder feels painful to my ears.

Only when I perform, I like to play a little louder at times, but not always. Then obviously wearing earplugs to concerts etc.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?  

I used to be on that train, surrounding myself with sound/music all the time. Then at some point, I suddenly felt super exhausted from constantly listening. I didn’t have the capacity to listen to music basically.

Nowadays there can be long periods when I don’t listen to music at all. For me, it’s important to have those breaks and just listen to my surroundings. But then I also feel anxious that I don’t have time to listen to all the interesting works being released …

So yeah, personal silence, whether external or internal, is very important to me. I’m interested in the threshold of hearing, the point of hearing and not hearing, and in 2025 I started a project where I record places and spaces that feel silent in some way. Then I try to present these recordings so that the listener would set the volume to be just at their perceptible level.

The first part was hiljaisuus nro. 1, a very simple recording of the beautiful Kulttuurisauna in Helsinki. In 2026 I can hopefully present more works around this topic, where the sound should be listened to as quietly as possible.



Silence overall is a complicated topic though.

Take silencing for example, which is one of the most common tactics used to oppress and hurt minorities. Repressing the voices of oppressed people, thus taking away their freedom of expression is extremely violent. By silencing these groups, the oppressors can paint a one-sided picture, anyway they want, and by that justify the violence towards these groups.

Silence isn’t always this beautiful peaceful thing, it can be the most horrible too.