Picture: Panu Aaltio, the composer of Little Siberia (right) – Netflix
Recently, we had the pleasure of talking with Finnish composer Panu Aaltio, who broke down the score of Dome Karukoski’s crime-comedy Little Siberia.
Little Siberia is a Finnish Netflix Original crime-comedy thriller directed by Tolkien’s Dome Karukoski. Co-written by Karukoski and Minna Panjanen, it is an adaptation of the novel by Antti Tuomainen.
When a meteorite falls from the sky by the village of Hurmevaara, its value could save the town from ruin. But when word quickly spreads of the meteorite’s value, it’s up to a veteran peacekeeper, Petar, and the village priest, Joel, to protect the rock from criminals. Meanwhile, Joel is dealing with his own crisis of faith after his wife announces her pregnancy. Joel is unable to have children due to his war injury. He just hasn’t told his wife.
Before working on Little Siberia, Panu Aaltio composed music for various feature films, television shows, and documentaries. He created the scores for the Tales of nature documentaries and the Super Furball films. Additionally, he collaborated with director Dome Karukoski on the Finnish drama The Home of Dark Butterflies.
Little Sibera will premiere on Netflix on March 21st, 2025.
Jacob: How did you first become involved with Little Siberia?
Panu: I had worked with Dome Karukoski on The Home of Dark Butterflies, which was the first feature film I composed the score for. So he [Dome] discovered me for feature film scoring and hired me for that. But it’s been a while, and we worked on some smaller things but not an entire feature film. Dome was also off directing Tolkien for Fox Searchlight, and the composer of that was Thomas Newman. So, it was scary to follow in those footsteps because this is Dome’s next film after Tolkien, but I am glad he asked me to do this.
Picture: Dome Karukoski (centre) with Nicholas Hoult (left) and Lily Collins (right) on the Tolkien set.
Once I read the script and had a meeting, I understood it was obviously a crime comedy. Still, the story had an overall layer of a more metaphysical existential level, which really clicked with me, so I had some ideas on how to bring that out in music.
I think that really clicked with Dome, he really liked my ideas there, so that’s when we went to score the film.
Picture: Dome Karukoski the director of Tolkien and Little Siberia – Tiia Ahjotuli / Otavamedia
Jacob: How would you describe your score for Little Siberia?
Panu: Well, it was quite experimental in many ways. I would say it’s very different from other stuff I’ve worked on because it was obvious that the conventional approaches wouldn’t work because Dome has a long playlist with hundreds of songs that he had been collecting while he was writing the screenplay together with the screenwriter. He had said none of these actually completely fit the film, so he hadn’t found anything that sounded like the film he was trying to make.
In the end, we started from scratch, which is both the best and the worst place at the same time. And that’s because it’s so great that you don’t have any temp music, but you also have no backup plan if it fails.
Picture: Little Sibera composer Panu Aaltio
At first, I tried some more conventional stuff, which Dome wasn’t feeling, so I got a lot more experimental. The breakthrough came when I experimented with recording my daughter’s voice. I had recorded her reading this Finnish poem that my partner had picked up, and I needed something that had some cool sound in the language. So I took the recording, scrambled it, and created a synthetic instrument from her voice. I was almost hesitant to play the demo to Dome because I thought he was gonna say it was absolutely crazy and that I had completely lost the plot, but he clapped his hands together and said, “That’s it, that’s excellent.” So, I knew we were okay from there.
Picture: Little Siberia – Netflix
Jacob: So, compared to other comedies you’ve worked on, Little Sibera is one of the more challenging scores you’ve composed?
Panu: Yeah, I would say so because it has this unique tone in all facets. So I feel that way, definitely. It was good, as we had already started composing when the editor, Harri, just started on the edit.
We were also temping the whole film with only my music. And there was great feedback you get from just watching the different cuts when you see that, “Oh! They’ve used that cue there!” and not even realising you could use it like that. Then maybe I would send something and think, “This is crazy. They’re not going to find anything to use for this.” But, in the end, they would find a brilliant spot for it. So that gives you new ideas, and it was a cool collaborative way to work on the score to have them live in the edit for so long.
So, yeah, it was very different because typically you would start a film score reasonably late in the process, or perhaps almost finished with the cut. It was very different in that way as well.
Picture Panu Aaltio – Timur Yilmaz / HS
Jacob: Were you given access to the dailies? Would that give you a rough idea of what certain scenes needed a specific tone or sound?
Panu: Yeah, I had some access to the dailies, but those are not as useful because when they’re not put into some form of context, it feels more distracting. That’s why we started with the editor, so that I could have the sequences where something happened, but in the beginning, I didn’t even have that because they were still working on the sequences. But I would ask, what do they need? Were there any cues that they would need?
So, yeah, whenever I can get some footage the earliest possible and convenient way, I always want to look at it. But, again, if it’s too unstructured, I should stick to imagining the score rather than looking at the picture too much.
Picture: Dome Karukoski on set with Eero Ritala on the set of Little Siberia
Jacob: It seems you were given the freedom to experiment, and there was a lot of collaboration in creating the score.
Panu: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think this was because we really started from scratch with the style. I was playing around with different types of sounds in this setting, and the domain seemed to connect with the metallophones I was using. These percussion instruments are typically found in gamelan music. So I had some of those up, and Dome was like, “Oh! Hey, wait, that sounds kind of like icicles!” which helps give this sense that we’re in this very cold environment and that we’re in Finland. That’s where some of the exploration started, where I found some elements that seemed to work and then figured out how to build bigger and bigger things.
Initially, while I was starting to write, such as the main titles, all I had was this percussion loop, and I thought to myself, how can I make a three-and-a-half-minute piece that has all kinds of action, amongst other things, with just the percussion loop? So, I need to see what goes together and what elements I can draw from.
Jacob: So, will any Finnish subscribers watching Little Siberia be able to recognise certain sounds that they associate with traditional Finnish music?
Panu: The most obvious one is a traditional Finnish folk instrument [Jouhikko], which I use in the score. There’s also a nyckelharpa, which is like a Swedish skeet fiddle.
That’s a more well-known instrument, you know, because Howard Shore used it in The Lord of the Rings, and people have heard that in films, but I think the jouhikko is a rarer string instrument with no fingerboard.
So you kind of hover your hands while you’re playing, and it’s extremely hard to play. But we had an amazing musician. Ilkka Heinonen was one of the best yohiko players in the world, and he just nailed everything. But it’s really fascinating. It has a very ancient sound, somehow, and it has a very different sound from typical string instruments. So, it was a lovely little extra tone to the music. And, yeah, so I think Finns would definitely recognize that one. Yeah.
Jacob: I’ll be interested to see how subscribers outside of Finland who watch the film and listen to the score to what they take in.
Panu: Yeah, yeah, for sure. It is a really a fusion of genres. It’s definitely not like straightforward folk music or anything like that. I was using gamelan percussion instruments, which are clearly different from the typical Finnish instruments that belong to a completely different part of the world. It has a stylistic variety, particularly notable in my vocalist, a Finnish jazz and folk singer who embodies both genres. There’s this off-kilter melody, which is the main melody of the score. And she’s using these almost scat singing techniques. But then there are also some very traditional belting folk vocals that she does. So it’s just that the style really moves between genres in many ways.
Jacob: So, what are you working on next?
Panu: I’m not sure how much I can say, but they’re making a new Super Furball, which is a series of children’s adventure movies. I’ve always had so much fun on that, and I think we’re working on a third one now. So I’m hoping everything goes well with that. It’s a lot of fun.
Jacob: Do you have a dream project you’d love to work on?
Panu: I think for dream projects, nature films have been so important to me personally. So I’ve been hoping to do more of those internationally. I’d love to work on a BBC nature project. I think that would be absolutely a dream come true, something like that.
Are you going to watch Little Siberia on Netflix? Let us know in the comments below!
