wheee...
It's 4 AM, I'm waiting for a bus at my university's computer class, and I just came from a 7-hour mayhem (!) of IDM/bleeptechno/ambient/dnb/hardhouse...
I better report what kind of an atmosphere Brothomstates &co created tonight for a crowd of a few hundred people. (Definitely not overcrowded at any rate!)
(/me takes a deep breath)
Okay, so me and my pals arrived at the place around 8 pm, when some chilled out DJs were warming the place up... We thought it was gonna be pretty quiet, since it wasn't until after 10 that more than a couple of dozen people were on the scene.
Well, the crowd gathered up pretty neatly, just as the beat turned perhaps weightier and more beat-oriented. Notable appearances in the DJ sets were Autechre's Eggshell and Orbital's Easy Serv.
This gave way for the first live act: A local techno-experimentalist by the name of Oreia. This was real nice, including a neat C64 medley and lots of impressive melody hooks. I recommend checking his website:
http://www.mikseri.net/artistit/?id=27782 (Oreia)
Then I have a blur in my head. This must be 11 pm now; more djing, more bouncy idm sounds interlaced with latino house (!)...
I honestly don't have any idea when and if Blamstrain or Toiminto2 made an appearance. People were interacting up there like they were all part of the same posse - as I guess they were.
Anyway, around 12.15 (I think - time is a vague concept!) Brothomstates enters... Now, I should say I've seen him once (@ Koneisto in summer 2003), and that was a relatively short ambient textured set.
But this time it turned out very different, very strange...
kvagga: If in Helsinki it was anything like what it was tonight, I can understand why you felt a bit confused. Honestly, there was nothing expect my faint memory of his face that told me this was Lassi Nikko in fact performing! Totally an oddball set.
(so, just to clarify, you'll know Brothomstates as short, blond-haired, maybe with a deep-rimmed fisherman's hat, often smoking [something!])
First of all, there's some guy with a "Suomi" T-Shirt up there as well, and it's Nikko and him as a "dynamic duo" with laptops. Plus, there's some guy with a mic and a long hair, occasionally kinda doing vocals on top of the music, ragga-style.
But the music! If the last time I saw him there were too few beats, this time there was no fear. In fact, it was beat-oriented to a degree that I could never have expected, knowing Nikko's main releases Claro (LP) and Qtio (EP) - which everybody should own, by the way!! ("Kobn-Tich-Ey" LP is available for free at his website as mp3!)
Yea, so it was actually a HARD HOUSE set! w000000t????!! yes!
It was a 2-hours-and-friggin-30-minutes (or so) progrssively developing hard-house set!
Ach, and the beats, the beats: a nearly constant pounding four-to-the-floor tempo, with slowly enveloping melodies faintly in the background. There were to be no recognizable tracks, nothing what so ever... Just 10-minute beatstorming mania "tracks", which blended into one another in one mega symphony of hyper-snappy rhythms and beats.
Yea, so it was definitely both exciting and disappointing at the same time. Disappointing, since I would've preferred more IDM-oriented beats (although there were at least half-a-dozen tracks with those as well), but also exhilirating, since it was perhaps the BEST HARDHOUSE SET ever!! Especially when at times it broke down into hyper-complex IDM-structures. Those were precious moments.
I mean, Lassi Nikko's a dangerous guy.
He can surprise you live, as he did me. But boy can he (and I have to congratulate the whole Swaeg team) mutate songs on the fly and actually make them sound "LIVE" for real...
so, I had fun (as, I hope, did kvagga too).
But now I must catch my bus! Bye.
- Love, Otto...
) and now I seriously gotta start concentrating on studying for the uni-entrance exams... Also, Tampere is pretty damn far away and like you know, I had one perfect IDM night already. 