2012 in pictures / part 4

Here comes the last part of photo stream of 2012.

Approaching Dover, UK.

giant corpse flower @ Botanical Garden, Basel

Late autumn catch in Schwarzwald.

Dead Elvis and his one man band @ Agora Bar.

Aoxotoxoa @ Far-Out

We have to move out. Big bummer. In few months. Major bummer.

But, before that: PARTY!
- And party we did, last weekend. Grateful Dead - cover-band "Aoxotoxoa" from Luzern was playing a concert in our basement bar "Far-Out". Far out.

Here's some atmosphere from that nice evening.

Happy Pluto-slippers waiting for the first guests. Note also Spidey.

Ducks supervising the sound quality.

Sound check =)

Busy busy fun On the Kitchen Table

Here is couple of press photos of my latest undertaking. Photographer is Uupi Tirronen / Kuvaunit. 

I have to admit that I cannot remember when I had as much fun doing a production as this time. The week we had on the actual venue was heavy and tiring, but also very rewarding. It turned out pretty much as me and the choreographer had been discussing all along. 

I hope the fun we had also shows on the outcome. We are hoping to to create a new fusion between the contemporary dance and the music of Mariska. A fusion that would interest wider audiences by combining these two fields. The aesthetical approach lies more along the lines of rock concert than a traditional way of staging dance.

Here's what the choreographer and musician think of the concept:






For getting into the mood:










- Live versions are somewhat more energetic, rock and rough. Come and check it out yourself if you're around in Helsinki this or next week.

ON THE KITCHEN TABLE (event description in Facebook)

Satu Tuomisto’s new choreography sets the table with a feast of fierce dance, flirtatious Finnish tunes, adult games, big hopes and a pile of broken taboos. 

 
The music is composed and performed by ex-rap artist turned grown-up singer-songwriter Mariska, accompanied by her band Pahat Sudet. Four dancers deliver an electric performance with the ever-energetic Mariska and her band. The old factory hall Pannuhalli fills up with dance, music, singing and talking. And at times the silence falls.

The premiere on Sat 22nd Jan will be followed by a unique dance club event. Join in some funky group choreography, let your body do its thing and sample our home-made pancakes! Beats will be provided by legendary Basso radio DJ Selecta Andor. Competitions, surprise performances and more: Don’t miss this one, dance yourself happy! Over 18s only.

Choreography, concept and directing: Satu Tuomisto
Music: Mariska & Pahat Sudet
Performers: Mariska, Luis Herrero, Jaakko Jakku, Klaus Suominen, Satu Elovaara, Elena Ruuskanen, Petri Kauppinen, Teemu Korjuslommi
Light design: Minna Heikkilä
Photos: Marko Rantanen
Production: Zodiak – Center for New Dance, Satu Tuomisto, Mariska & Pahat Sudet

Premiere 22.1.2011 at 7 pm Pannuhalli

Other performances
26.1 at 7 pm
28.1 at 7 pm
29.1 at 7 pm
1.2 at 7 pm

On the Kitchen Table in the Facebook

Ismo Alanko Teholla @ Yo-talo

Yo-talo is definitely one of the nicest small rock clubs in Tampere. If it's not too crowded, that is. This time I went there on Thursday evening to listen to one of my all time favorite artists, Ismo Alanko. Ismo has strong roots in Finnish new wave punk scene with his bands Hassisen Kone and Sielun Veljet, since 1980. Nowadays he tours mostly with smaller set-ups. At Yo-talo he performed as a duo with percussionist Teho Majamäki.

Ismo Alanko

The evening was quite pleasant. There was just good amount of audience, -not too much, so that one can still move around and get a drink after decent waiting time. The second act of the evening was Danish band called Nephew, who played quite straight forward rock with some Depeche Mode nuances. It seemed though, that most of the audience had come to see Ismo, because many of them left after his concert. But I have to admit that this Nephew was sort of positive surprise, since I didn't know anything about them before.

Nice crowd

Below you'll find couple of samples of Ismo's music over the years. Just to give you the idea =). I really like this stuff.

 

One of the latest releases: Onnellisuus / Happiness

 

My personal favorite: Ekstaasiin

 

Oldies from 80's: Peltirumpu

R.I.P. Steve Lee

Gotthard

Bundesfeier Im Fluss

Kulturfloss Im Fluss
Im Fluss is an open-air festival that has been organized in Basel for quite some years already and they always have programm for approximately two weeks offering a concert practically every night on a little raft moored just next to the Mittlere Brücke in downtown.The festival starts always on the last week of July.

The audience can sit on the stairs by the river bank or on the restaurant terraces to enjoy the concerts. I really like this festival since it's free and very popular and I always meet there whole lot of people that are usually somehow not so often on the move.

Im Fluss, the raft

The river bank

Bundesfeier
1st of August is the Independence Day of Switzerland. To honor the day city of Basel organizes every year a humongous fireworks spectacle among other things. They bring two barges to the Rhein near the Mittlere Brücke and both barges shoot in sync like there was no tomorrow. This is bigger than any New Year and widely know also outside Switzerland.

Prelude: Fireworks by Chill am Rhy restaurant

Anticipated waiting

Most of Basel and whole lot of  visitors all come to the river to observe the spectacle. At the same time the open-air festival Im Fluss is also going on, so they offer usually two bands to entertain the audience while waiting for the fireworks.

Roli Frei & the Soulful Desert

Hundreds of little lanterns were released

- A benefit for Camerun organized by FAIRMED

Since I was also this year setting the equipment up for the festival, I was privileged to go see the fireworks from the raft. This is a very cool option since the river bank is totally jam-packed with people and you have to elbow your way in and crane your neck to see something. This you can see in a photo above, I guess. Instead of this, I could go on the raft where there was only something like 20 people and I could lay back on the floor. Real chill!!!

Albeit it's bit crowded by the river, it's definately worth seeing, at least once in your life if you happen to be in the neigborhood. This was for me the first time I saw it properly, previous years I've been somewhere further away. But this time, I was really in the heart of it all, soooo coooool.

This year the show lasted something like 25 minutes with enormously big rockets. It seems to get bigger every year... I would be really interested to know how much they invest into this =)

One of the two barges, some 30m away from the raft

Below you can see a little fraction of the show.

Spaktekel in Dornach

On a gray Saturday on July we drove to Dornach to check out this open-air festival organized on an old castle ruins there. Dornach is a little village on the Baselland canton, just outside Basel city.

Old drawing of the castle Dornach

  

castle today (photo source: Rockets)

a real lousy photo of one of the stages

The festival is called Spaktekel Burgruinen-Fest and this was, as far as I could figure, the fifth time it was organized. From the outside the entrance looked pretty much the same as any other festival would, but inside it was somewhat different. It felt instantly like I had stepped through a timemachinen and landed somewhere in the Middle Ages. Or at least a live action role play of those times. Amongst the colorful tents there were fair maidens in their long gowns and knights in shiny armors scurrying about. ( The rest of the population was mostly Goths dressed in black with occasional "Muggle" here and there.

Mead (honeywine, which the hobbits also greatly enjoy) was being drunken out of horns and guys were competing in ax-throwing and archery. The whole area was lit only by candles and torches and there was also a fire-show late in the evening.

The bands performing at the festival were mostly somehow medieval or celtic tuned; lots of flutes, drums, bagpipes, vocals arranged to many layers like the Vikings used to do. For a sample check out Kel Amrun or Ilsah.

Flyer, photo by Verein Spaktekel

fuzzy atmospheric pic

This festival was a very nice and laid-back experience for me. And suitable for the whole family, so there was relatively lots of kids too. I also especially enjoyed the fact that it is not soooo commercial and merchandise-oriented, but more about just like-minded people hanging out and enjoying music. -And mead, of course. By, the Viking Blood was good, -red and strong, not too sweet. No wonder it's the bestseller of the manufacturer Imkerei.

Depeche Mode, Helsinki 02.02.2010

Prologue
It's been something like 14 years since I last went to see a really big name in concert, that being Deep Purple on Summum stadium in Grenoble, France. Although I fully enjoyed that, somehow I've missed the big events since. Hmm. Anyway, Depeche Mode is one of my absolutely favorite bands, so it was high time to end the silence.

Some time ago I suddenly remembered that Depeche Mode is gonna play on Hartwall Areena in Helsinki. Once I had finally confirmed my arrival to Finland, it was time to see if I can still land a ticket to this particular event. To my delight there was quite bunch of them on sale in Huuto.net (sort of national Ebay in Finland), so I could even choose.

I got a seat pretty close to the stage -so, with bit of imagination, I could reach out and try to touch Dave =)


The Act
So, how it was in the end...? It was cool. Having never seen the guys live before, it struck me as a quite energetic act, although you can sense that Gahan is not youngest of men anymore. But he gave it his best effort and the audience really bought his show. That was probably the best part of the whole show to see how all of the audience was singing along, clapping and waving their hands to the music. It gave me somehow strange sense of community even though a was sitting in the middle of total strangers.

The sea of raised hands - Personal Jesus.

The tunes were mostly the old faithful ones and included more or less all my favorites also. The band played pretty exactly two hours. The general mixing levels left me wanting bit more precision and the sync was also bit wavering time to time, but then again, it's supposed to be live act and not brain-surgery-level-perfection. Couple of the feed-backs I could have lived without, though. All in all, it was very entertaining experience and some of the melodies really rocked, like "Wrong" and "I Feel You". Some of the slower tempo ballads didn't fit so perfectly into the mix, but they gave nice breathers in between.

Wrong.

It also looked good, albeit not really revolutionary new. The highlight of the set was humongous LED-screen with a half-sphere extension "bubble" in the top-middle. Both live-stream from 7 cameras and pre-designed videos (by Anton Corbijn) were projected to this surface during the show. Read the whole concept on manufacturer XL Video's press release.

They also had four movable trusses, which were sort of arc-shaped and hinged, so with chain-hoists they can be moved both vertically and bent in various angles within one unit. These trusses were equipped with six moving heads each. This you can see from the video clip below. (I'm so sorry about the dreadfully bad sound quality.) I was sitting on the side, so the stereo sound was probably far from perfect for me, but I imagine that the movement of the trusses looked cooler from this angle than from straight front =)

A little sampler of "I feel You"
-just for technical aspects, of course =)

Set list
In Chains
Wrong
Hole To Feed
Walking In My Shoes
It's No Good
A Question Of Time
Precious
World In My Eyes
Insight (sung by Martin)
Home
Miles Away / The Truth Is
Policy Of Truth
In Your Room
I Feel You
Enjoy The Silence
Never Let Me Down Again

Encore #1
Dressed In Black
Stripped
Behind The Wheel
Personal Jesus