Selected reviews, radio and interviews. Full bio, photos and videos in the EPK.
Radio and interviews
BBC Radio 3, Night Tracks · "XIV Beyondlands" featured, 2024
The Wire · Charts, May 2024 issue
Resonance FM, London · Interview, June 2024
Vapore Magazine, Italy · Interview on Coexistence, September 2024 · Read
Loop, Chile · Interview, 2024 · loop.cl
A Closer Listen, US · TERRA selected among the Top 10 Experimental Albums of 2021 · Read
COEXISTENCE (2024)
"On her third solo album, Sulkunen adds yet another level of complexity to her electronic avant-garde pop by skillfully integrating documentary interview recordings and samples of precarious, unheard voices into the mix."
Frank P. Eckert, Germany
"In this third part of the Sonority trilogy, she listens to marginalized voices, migrants and homeless people, who imagine a reality where coexistence is not associated with trouble. Voices dreaming that home and happiness are not unreachable."
Bad Alchemy, Germany
"A true polyphonic work, where a multitude of voices emerge, mixed with predominantly electronic compositions. At times almost sacred, at times haunted. Small parts of an amorphous whole: humanity's hopes and fears gathered."
Seismograf, Denmark · Read
TERRA (2021)
"Writing from Copenhagen, the composer muses on the loneliness of lockdown and the cloud of climate change, nestling her voice in banks of brass and strings. The sense of foreboding is palpable."
Richard Allen, A Closer Listen, US · Read
"Although highly original and astonishingly innovative, there's also a quietly classical sense of respect and reverence to Sulkunen's ambient masterpiece. I can touch and feel the echoes of nature's elements re-emerging from a long distant past, living and breathing peacefully within the composer's borderless music."
Mike Gates, UK Vibe, 5/5 · Read
AIKA / TILA (2021)
"One of the most impressive figures in the lively North-European improvised music scene. Unique and profound, Aika's music runs through the freezing lands of Scandinavia... Sophisticated and experimental."
Windout, Italy
"Sulkunen's voice fits perfectly into the tracks she appears on; it is almost as if it were made for this ensemble... And at the back sits perhaps the most exciting drummer from Finland, Olavi Louhivuori, holding it all together."
Jan Granlie, Salt Peanuts, Norway
KOAN (2018)
"Her newfound language and manipulated voice are used as a provocative kōan, forcing the listener to adopt a fresh, deep-listening, meditative approach, sometimes even a dream state of mind, to language and voices."
Eyal Hareuveni, Salt Peanuts · Read
"With its finely detailed solo composition, KOAN is closer to the contemporary, complex layered vocal and sound worlds of Holly Herndon than to anything else heard from the Copenhagen jazz scene."
Nordische Musik, Germany
"A very fascinating album from an artist who dares to take a step outside of the established."
Lira Musikmagasin, Sweden · Read
BELONGING (2016) · Nominated for a Danish Music Award, Vocal Jazz Album of the Year
"Johanna Elina continues to cultivate her style. The Denmark-based singer-songwriter with a jazz background is even more fearless and abstract than before."
Helsingin Sanomat, Finland, 4/5 · Read
"One of a kind: a songwriter and singer who writes and performs her melancholic, eccentric and in many ways quite simple songs. Dramatic, very style-conscious, and implemented in an avant-garde way."
Ivan Rod, Gaffa, Denmark · Read
OUR GARDEN (2011)
"Johanna Elina, whose voice one immediately falls in love with, does not think in categories. She just writes magnificent, somber tunes."
Jazzthetik, Germany
"Thoughts and musical ideas to discover, from a very individually shaped, often untouched garden kingdom. Fantastic!"
Jazzdimensions, Germany · Read
With IKI
Danish Music Award, Jazz Vocal Album of the Year, 2011
Flammenwerfer, Hotel Pro Forma with Blixa Bargeld and Nils Frahm, 2023–2025 · Reumert Award, Music Theatre of the Year 2025