Short review of everything

Waiting for Godot

I´ll start this list of reviews of recent culture activities with one of my favourite plays! I went to see Samuel Beckett´s Waiting for Godot at the Kansallisteatteri (in Helsinki) and my expectations were pretty high. Fortunately this managed to satisfy me almost on every level! I was a little worried in advance since one of the main parts was played by Esko Salminen who, in my opinion, is one of the most over appreciated actors in Finland. He however fit quite well to his part and his, yet again in my opinion, mannerism worked ok as Vladimir´s role. What lifted the play to really excellent level was Hannu-Pekka Björkman who made astonshing job as Pozzo! Every single time he opened his mouth, everything flowed towards more coherent conclusion! The setup was very traditional and I remember seeing quite similar background use in one of the television versions shown in Teema few years ago. It´s good but I think there should have been some modifications for more intense experience, specially in parts when audience was supposed to feel the "boredom" of the cast waiting for something to happen. Over all, this version was very well made and hopefully we´ll see some more Beckett in the future!

Le Havre

Aki Kaurismäki´s latest film is called Le Havre and it is really nice one! Kaurismäki has done lot´s of good films but the quality has been swinging from excellent to annoying. This time he is presenting much more positive future visions! This movie is very much a triumph of humanism and trust and caring of other people. The charachters that are naturally in tight position (ie. the police officer) are shown as people with social consciousness, though there is a distinct line between generations (contemporary world is shown in a bit ugly light). Kaurismäki´s greatest ability is to show us very beautifull scenes of the cities he is using as background, he definitely is fond of urban atmosphere! All the actors do excellent job and the soundtrack suits well to the over all feel. The theme is obviously quite hot topic and his message is clear! I would love to see a little more surreal elements in his future films, since they were the reasons why some of his works are so good!

Crazy Clown Time

Now this was unexpected! Though I knew David Lynch has had his fingers involved in the music production earlier, it was still very odd to hear the first single Good Day Today earlier this autumn. Crazy Clown Time is the first real artist album Lynch has ever made and if you are fond of his soundtracks you will not be disappointed. Some of the songs are in more typical vein, dark rockish atmospheres, but others have strange space disco, or balearic feel to them. Lynch sings himself in most of the tracks, if you can call this kind of vocal performance singing. His voice is esoteric and haunting and it does give the important impact to the end product! The album is also very long, but I think it is essential to get the hypnotic feel he seems to be chasing! I feel that he does achieve the correct vibe and in the end I will give this solid *****! It´s also note worthy that Lynch has opened a club in Paris that is trying to simulate the effect of Club Silencio in his movie Mullholland Drive. Unfortunately you can visit the club only by becoming a member and since I´m not living in Paris it would be somewhat pointless effort.

Religion & Magic in ancient Egypt

Last august I visited the British Museum to see the Egyptian section. After checking all the mummies and hieroglyphs I bought a book from the shop called Religion and Magic in ancient Egypt by Rosalie David. There was plenty of other choices available but this felt most coherent but at the same time enjoiable enough to keep my interest up. Now that I have read it I must say that the amount of information is almost overwhelming. The book is trying to cover the whole spectrum of Egyptian culture from the earliest known examples (some 5000 bce) until the demise of the ancient culture around 500 ace. It´s exhausting task even for the 400 pages it has space to show it´s contents. The book has been critizised of being mixed and incoherent in places, and I must admit that in some cases this is true. But I still think that it gains advantage with sheer volume of knowledge it can offer. Troughout the book you can get yourself sucked into the ordinary life of egyptian inhabitant and lot´s of customs are written open very well. It also works really well as a source material! One point is that some conclusions are controversial and reader must bear in mind that researchers are trying to interpret scattered writings and sources from thousands of years ago. Therefore everything you read is, in the end, only speculation. Anyway, this book is very much worth to read!

Pyramid Scheme

I´ve been wondering what would it need to create a huge monument to celebrate your afterlife? I mean the way the ancient Egyptians did, the Pyramids! How, in a modern western society, you could make something like that?

First of all, I have always thought that it would be sweet to donate my body to science when I die. I always imagined my dead body hanging from the ceiling of some local university main entrance. But more recently, since I´ve been reading lot´s of books about the Egyptian culture, I have created a lust for something more spectacular. I want everyone to remember my contribution thousands of years later, the same way the Pharaoh Khufu is remembered!

Since I live in Finland, I have to consider this trought Finnish society and I have to obey Finnish legislation. I assume that some of these matters would be easier to handle in some other parts of the world.

Anyway, the first thing is the location of this forthcoming monument (I´ll speak later on about a Tomb and this means generally a Pyramid). Obviously it should be somewhere where it could be admired by the future generations. There is two problems: the prize of the site and the city planning. If I wanted to build the tomb into the center of a major city, for example Töölönlahti in Helsinki, it would cost insane amounts of money to get hold of the land. And since the city planning is often politically administered I would need to be inside of the ruling party to get proper license to use the site.

This would propably mean that I would have to make some compromise about the location. Easiest option would be to move the project into some municipal that is suffering a loss of jobs and inhabitants, ie. somewhere in the countryside. That´s not too bad a choice if you manage to find a site close to some highway that is not too far from the major cities. The prizes for this kind of land are often way smaller than in the big cities. However the planning might still be a problem. Obviously you should somehow convince the local administrators about the benefits of a massive pyramid. They may attack this plan by saying that enormous tomb would be useless structure and it woul prevent the future use of the said areas. You will have to provide them a larger perspective since the politicians usually care only about the coming two years, not several millennias further.

Tourism is very good argument! Tourism only gets better when time passes by! Employment is another good viewpoint and it is also related to tourism. But that is not all, the project itself would employ huge group of people for very long time. This is because the building of this kind of monument would take at least 20 years of time I assume.

But this brings in another problem: Ancient Egyptians used slavery as construct workers and the pesants during the Nile floods. This meant very small costs from the work force, though they did have to organize the catering and related stuff. When the Pharaoh was considered as a deity, it was much easier to get everyone on your side. These days we do have powertools and big machines to move the blocks, but still it would take fair amount of workers to get this done.

Materials is another concern. In Egypt they used limestone that is somewhat easy to shape. But in Finland there is not any limestone available. Therefore I should propably use granite. I´m not an expert but I assume it´s a little bit harder to work, but it´s widely available. You have to remember that this project differs from house building. There will be lots of savings when you don´t have to connect the tomb to pipelines or provide electricity to the whole building. You don´t need to care about insulation or air conditioning apart from the building phase. All you need is a good general plan and an artist to create the wall scripts!

For the wall scripts you will have to list all your accomplishments and exaggerate them! It´s the same procedure the Egyptians did. Also remember to leave all the negative things away and concentrate on the overall benefits your presence provided to the nation. You could also add some hints to divinity, but more efficient way is to be incoherent and generally silly. That way you can guarantee that the excavators in the future will definitely be confused about the meaning of your inscriptions. They tend to interpret these writings as riddles, hidden messages and occult secrets. When things seem like mystical events they create more efficient remembrance in the future populace.

Funding of this project is also a bit complicated, but not that hard in the end. Of course it will be a struggle when you go first time to the bank to ask for the mortgage to build a tomb. But when you reach the politicians and manage to convince them about previously mentioned benefits the ball starts to roll by itself.

The only thing I´m really worried here is the timespan. 20 years is actually quite optimistic schedule to get this done. It could actually take anything from 20-80 years to complete the task. Therefore you would need to get the main chamber ready when you eventually pass away and create a huge fanbase in the social media to support the project when your time on this planet is over.

Thankfully there is lots of architechtural pictures available for pyramids and the basic structure is really simple. And you don´t need to build treasure rooms or traps to secure the place since there will not be any treasure to store. Actually you could leave the front door open so that everyone could visit the tomb and seek for inspiration from the wall paintings and the mummified body (I suppose, effective mummification should be pretty easy with modern medical approach). Actually, now that I think, the local University might be interested about this project... Maybe I should contact them next!

Dj Error - Pinball Fantasy

Ooh sir! I Did this mix to test my new pair of Pioneer CDJ800 mk II cd players:

  Dj Error - Pinball Fantasy by Vinguru

01 Exit 100 - Liquid (Bubble One)
02 Electrochemie LK - Schall
03 A.W.E.X. - I Like That
04 N´Joi - Bad Things (Wink´s Stabbed Filled Acid Version)
05 Hardfloor - We Will Never Stop Programming This Way
06 Mauro Picotto - Like This Like That (5am Mix)
07 Kopfuss Resonator - VPM Groove
08 Enri Lorenzo - Mobile Telephone
09 Emmanuel Top - Fusion
10 Rob Acid - Sesiroth
11 Age - Doomsday
12 Mark NRG - Attention Acid
13 Silent Breed - Acid Fucker
14 Koenig - Clap Your Hands (Electro Mix)

Tracklist contains some lesser known acid tunes and basic techno. Little bit of everything I should say. I have moved a month ago and most of my records are at the storage untill I find suitable apartment. Therefore I have only small arsenal of cd´s available (mostly techno and trance) and all the 12" are also stored. That´s why this is very much unplanned selection.

Mix starts with some funky acid bouncers and moves into a little bit harder side until Emmanuel Top takes things closer to the tranzy state of mind. In the end we get back to the funky acid business. The final track is a fine peace of innovative electro by Koenig from the brilliant Superstition label!

Primal Scream live playing SCREAMADELICA!

This may be some overly inspired blaa blaa, but damn that yesterdays gig was good! As I may have told before, I have quite a lot of records and I generally get bored about everything very fast. This means that most of the time, I change the styles and genres I listen and same albums rarely end up being playd repeatedly. Anyway, if I would try to sum those records that get the most air time, I think Primal Screams Screamadelica would be close to the top!

It´s not the best album I own, but it has characteristics that suit wide range of situations and most of all emotions! There is the psychedelic chilling along side with hands in the air party options. And extremely beautifull melodies hidden inside! Yes, when I have trouble to decide what to play next, this is a safe bet.

I found this album with a friend of mine some ten years ago. We were in a bar in the center of Helsinki (Cafe Meteori) and there was one of our favourite trance dj´s playing a special chillout set. The guy was dropping lots of classic balearic trax and suddenly this very long song with horns and gosspel choir was aired. Together we decided to ask what on earth are we listening since both of us wanted to get it. The song was what is presented in the the following video:



Next day I went to buy the album and since then I have wanted to hear it live. I really don´t mind the rest of their albums, though I have to admit that I should propably give them another change. Why I like Screamadelica is quite likely because Andrew Weatherall and the Orb were behind the production and their influence formed the basis for the acid house and dub roots.

Yesterday the awaited gig finally arrived! And the band was in a really good form! They definitely seemed to enjoy playing these old songs and the live versions of some of the songs were just astonishing! I loved every second of the gig and danced my feet sore! Last track of the first set was of course Come Together and when the song was coming to an end, rest of the band left the stage leaving Bobby Gillespie alone infront of the audience and he demanded everyone to sing the chorus for almost 5 minutes to get the encore. This was worth every cent paid for the tickets!!!

ps. Since I´m not much of a fashion enthusiast, I still do like T-shirts. Screamadelicas cover is one of the most amazing album covers ever and I just had to have a T-shirt of that since there was such available. I will include a picture of that later!

Krazy Kat - possibly the greatest comic ever!

It was some time during the early 90´s when I first encountered the translated version of Krazy Kat at the local library. They had suprisingly educated and well curated selection of intelligent comics there. Though I was more into American mainstream and European classics back then. But then again, I had also fallen in love with Calvin & Hobbes (which is by the way really heavy contender for the best comic category) that was also widely available in finnish. I realised the similarities between the philosophical and surreal sides of Krazy Kat and the fast paced but still slow tempo of Calvin & Hobbes later when I had matured a bit.

The other shared quality with these two was the use of landscapes as their narrator. Landscape could create perfect timing and really strong moods for both series. This resulted the themes to be taken into really strong situations where surrealistic and unpredictable events could get proper effects. What also helped was the language. Krazy Kat is one hugely underrated mythical poetry - an epic that should be lifted next upon such masters as Homer.

Ok, so why I am writing this now is that I just bought this a moment ago: Krazy & Ignatz 1919-1921: A Kind, Benevolent and Amiable Bric.  It´s a collection of sunday pages ranging three year period of adventures of Krazy Kat and her (or is it his) arch rival and secretly loved one Ignatz mouse. This is now 8th album of Krazy stories I have. First three were Finnish translations (that are actually very well done, thanks to Soile & Heikki Kaukoranta whom have done great things for Finnish Comic culture by translating so many excellent works of art past 40 years) and the rest are recent English re-publications done by Fantagraphics.

Little something about the basic story line: Krazy Kat tells about the life at Kokonino Kounty located middle of Arizona desert and close by the Mexican border. The inhabitants of said kounty reflect early 20th century American life very precisely but always quite satirically. The main characters are Krazy Kat, who is a warm hearted and naive person strongly in love with Ignatz mouse, the cunning villain who hates Krazy and shows the hatred by throwing bricks to her noodle. The third party is offisa P. Pupp, a dog in the police force that admires Krazy and keeps pushing Ignatz into jail after forementioned brick tossing. These three form the triangular basis for most of the events but they get company from the varied group of essential and interesting side characters. The list is long but here is some of the most important fellows: Joe Stork, the purveyor of progeny to prince and proletariat, ms. Kwak Wakk who delivers rumours along the characters, Bum Bill Bee who comes and goes but is never on the way to nowhere, Walther Sephus Austridge, Kolin Kelly, the baker in bricks and so on... everyone have their own important role in the life in Kokonino and everyone interfere everyones life from time to time.

Here is two examples of 1922 Kat pages:

It´s important to realise that these represent only the early period of Krazy adventures. The works continued without break till middle of 1940´s, almost 40 years. George Herriman, the artist behind all this kept evolving the art and the style through out years and while most of the early works are black & white, the final years were coloured.

Krazy´s world is open for everything. It´s a surreal realm where modern inventions come and go and doesn´t leave a mark, but merely work for the purposes of the ever caring narrator. It´s wonderfull to notice the love of lifes mysterious things and surprising events that may or may not occur. There is always something strange going on. For example, the Mexican Jumping Bean, Willie Mendoza tries to conquest Kokonino from time to time and while mr Austridge may solve the problem by swallowing the intruder, the soon to be laid egg will cause havoc among the local justice system. Background changes basically in every picture that makes the world flexible for the plot to wander into territories that would otherwise be impossible to reach.

There is actually quite a lot of writings about Krazy Kat. These new publications include very well written research about various issues of the comics history and other such things. These include the racial issue of Herrimans heritage, the love of the Mexican life and Indian culture, the problems with the original publisher and their news papers that thought Krazy was too complicated series to most of the American papers (it was Hearst that published the comic and Randolph Hearst was the person who quaranteed Krazy Kats succes by forcing the papers to include it to their pages), tha other cultural phenomenas that followed (i.e. the Jazz Pantomime, etc.) and so on... I highly recommend to read these trough!

I also recommend the Fantagraphs publications for anyone who sometimes wants to indulge themselves with intelligent stories of mindbending graphics! These are extremely well made with much much love and time sacricficed!

Best Tekno ever (2008 edition)

I just found an old forum post I made in 2008. It was about the top ten best tekno ever and I seem to have divided my participation into best trax and best albums categories. Anyway, here is the list from that period:

Top 10 tekno trax

1. Ultra Sonic - What is Tekno?
2. Energy 52 - Café del Mar (Nalin & Kane remix)
3. Incisions - Techno Gong
4. Misjah - Keep Your Love
5. I-F - Playstation no. 2
6. Boris Blenn - Portamento
7. Thomas Krome - Bitches from Hell
8. Lochi - London Acid City
9. Egyptian Empire - The Horn Track
10. Prodigy - No Good (Start the Dance)

Top 10 tekno albums

1. Cristian Vogel - All Music has Come to an End
2. Chemical Brothers - Dig your own Hole
3. Future Sound of London - Lifeforms
4. Juno Reactor - Transmissions
5. The Speed Freak - For You
6. Emmanuel Top - Asteroid
7. BT - ESCM
8. Various - It's Not Intelligent...And It's Not From Detroit...But It's Fuckin' 'Avin It
9. Dune - Expedicion
10. Scuba - A Mutual Antipathy

I suppose these lists would be different today if I re-did them. Some trax and albums would still make it to the new list too, but some should go back to runners up league... Albumwise this is a little closer to todays list anyhow. My taste of what´s good changes by the moods and therefore is propably different everyday.

I have been using an old Muzik magazine that had a list of 50 greatest dance music albums as my shopping list for last 10 years, and today I have over 30 of those in my collection. I don´t agree with the whole list and it definitely is that years product but still it has given me very good hints of interesting albums. I will try to do a 2011 edition of that later this year.

Suprisingly I made a collection cd some years ago that had almost similar tracklist. Here is the cover for that!

Happosauna - Old Skool Acid Rave

ok, this is a bit different. This is a story about an event that was done by a bunch of "Jannus" in love with acid tekkno. It´s called Happosauna (Acid Sauna, translated from Finnish)!

I will include some more pictures later about the installation process and such and also from the party itself!

The event was created about a year ago, but it was put in practise actually in very short time. All the guys involved have been organizing such shows for years but recently they have had less interest to making these underground raves. It was very nice to see these old skool lovers give so much energy for the setup and planning and the party ended up being colourfull and vivid experience of relentless hedonism!

Here is a video of the headline acts performance:



Yes, it´s Healium feat. K-Larm & J.Raninen LIVE and damn that´s heavy set! The guys did have four (4!!!) Roland TB303´s and one 707 drum machine! (I´ll add a picture of that too later) Listen tot the Acid Drop at the 22-23 minute mark, it´s insanely intense! At the beginning of the video someone is shouting "Päästäkää irti" that means release it or let it loose! Obviously meaning the 303 mayhem!

Other artists included Guardian from Japan playing two sets (one hour of Hardfloor and another filled with London Acid Techno), Kokki303 dropping some evil classics with his Mexican Wrestling mask on, Looney delivering some 80´s 303House and Error spinning Emmanuel Top style monotonic acid trance! Finally Error and Looney played b2b and some other guys joined the game till late in the morning!

The obvious winner was of course Pump Panels remix of Confusion that was played about four times! There was heavy loads of classic acid like Mad Cows on Acid, Acperience, Access and Circus Bells and everyone seemed to enjoy the shit really well! And then there was the Sauna!!! That was propably the reason why some of the dj´s managed to lighten peoples garments at the end of the party...

Anyway, massive thanks goes to production partners and artists! And very big thanks to the party posse! You are really keeping the underground alive!

Black Swan (and the Finnkino experience)

We had some gift tickets for movies from christmas and their expiration date was yesterday, so it was about time to see one. After some negotiations Darren Aronofsky´s Black Swan won the ticket! And that was an experience!

I´m somewhat biased what to think of the film. I must admit that it really works on certain levels very well. But at the same time I´m also irritated about some crucial points. Yes, it is really captivating and intensive movie. It is also very good looking. Aronofsky knows how to make pictures look astonishing! He also builds the suspension very carefully.

But this is also the point where I´m not that keen on this business. Some of the effects are so overused that I would have expected him to be more creative (though they are well made). And the motivation behind characters is beyond being a clichê! First of all, I personally can´t accept the myth of artists being creative enough only when they are having huge mental problems. The second point is that the best experiences are not made to work with fear, I mean the working environment. And I see that Aronofsky has some issues with her mother (for example this theme is also seen in Requim for a dream).

Fortunately the actors save this in the end! They are all very good and they can breathe life to these forced characters. And the techno scene is very intensive!

--

I´m sorry for the negative tone of this post, but it is partial caused by the stupidity of the Finnish movie monopoly: Finnkino. Here is a short rant about the bad experience:

- Their website is just horrible: it is heavy and doesn´t load well with mobile connections. It also doesn´t scale to smaller screens well.
- This gift ticket systems sucks big time. When you buy gift tickets for example christmas presents why on earth does the expiration date have to be so short? And why can´t it be randomly changing the last date? Because everyone had the same expiration date there were insane queues for the last day!
- The queues are caused by the fact that you can´t order gift tickets from their website! You can buy normal tickets there with your credit card and you can reserve them but you can´t buy gift tickets.
- You need a code from the ticket to get to the toilets at the theatre (and I assume this changes time to time) but you obviously can´t print the gift number to the ticket (to help the ordering and printing the tickets by yourself).
- Half of the toilets were broken and the room was in horrible condition.
- At the candy store you had to weight the candies youself with a machine that prints a barcode but the clerk still has to type the amount themselves.
- Before the movie you will have to watch half an hour of crappy commercials and even some idiotic propaganda about copyrights (I will write my view of this issue later). I understand that they try to make their business lucrative but the prices are already quite high.
- The movie selection is really week, the amount of independent and generally interesting movies is just really short. This is due to their absolute monopoly in Helsinki.
- and so on... These are the reasons that I don´t go that many times to movies these days. Thanks to internet there is so many alternative options to see some truly amazing films!

Random Arts

This Easter has involved some interesting art experiences. Here is a short description of them:

1. Miró exhibition @ Emma

Miró was on of the greatest modernists in the 20th century. A Year ago I went to see his exhibition at Fundacio Joan Miró in Barcelona and it was very very exciting! The place itself is really interesting and fantasy like. So I was likewise enthusiastic when I heard that his exhibition was coming to my close by museum. Though Emma has done some interesting but little bit disappointing exhibition earlier (Monét exhibition had only like 8 pieces on show, Malevits was a little bit better) this was for once something else. There was about 200 works available! And to my advantage these works were mostly from the Mallorca collection - so most of them were something that I had not seen before! Half of the works were sculptures. I must say that I´m more fond of Miró´s paintings. The Sculptures work better in their correct places and they were much better in Barcelona than Espoo... Anyway, the paintings were yet again a huge isnpiration, I should do some try outs myself.

2. Foot Prints on the Moon aka Le Orme by Luigi Bazzoni

This film has been waiting some time now at my shelf. I finally had time to check it out. I got this from the local movie dealer when I asked him to recommend me some old horror movies in the vein of Don´t Look Now and Wickerman. It does it´s job mighty fine, though this time it´s even slower and more hazy! But the visuals are astonishing and the suspension has been built very sophisticated. It´s a story about a woman who is haunted with dreams about a person stranded on the moon. She has to go to a small town of Garma to find the reason behind all this weirdness. Overall this works well, though some viewers may find the slow pace disturbing.

3. Some photography lessons

I was talking to a friend of mine last week about cameras and photography and suddenly I finally realised some major points in using my Canon 450D setup. Here is some firts results, though I´m still practicing some of the basics:

The first one is my cat Isis and the second one is just a rehearsal.

Cycling season starts tomorrow!

Sweet! My cycling season is about to start very soon! Basically, I will get my bike back from the repair shop tomorrow after work. It has been taken trough spring maintenance and it should be ready for full action! I will definitely take it for a spin right after it´s ready.

Actually I have two bikes. My old war horse is the Norwegian DBS and it´s almost 20 years old hybrid. I use that mainly for going to a local supermarket for shopping. It´s quite nice bike, but it would need a major fixing. It looks a bit worn-out so there is no worry at leaving it in front of a market.

The other one is a two year old Cyclocross by Kona: Jake The Snake 2009. I just love this bike!

Originally I went to a cyclingstore to buy me a new hybrid, but the model that I was looking for was sold out (it was also by Kona). The guys at the store recommended cyclocross bike. They did have one with extra tall skeleton left and they offered it with 30% discount (it was late august and the season was coming to an end) but it was still way more expensive than I had thought of investing. After some testing I was sold, it certainly was the best bike I had ever tried before!

Now after one full season I still think this was the best decision I could have done! I did get a quality bike dirty cheap and it´s even big enough for me, and yes I´m a tall guy so that is not an easy task! And that reminds me about my new cycling shoes:

Look at those monsters!!! These were just sprawling at the store shelf. The amazing thing here is that these are the size 52 in European scale! I do have some difficulties at finding big enough shoes for normal use so this was more than a pleasant surprise! I just can´t wait to try these on with my Jake the Snake and push the envelope even further during this season. I will have to put some real objectives for this summer performance. At least I will resolve to cycle commute as many times as possible!

Inspiration trough music (and background noise)

Best writing soundtrack is Jazzy, Atmospheric Drum & Bass! This is the conclusion I have become trough recent experiments.

I´ve been writing my final thesis quite intensively and since I´m addicted to music and sounds surrounding me 24/7, I just can´t concentrate without music (and sometimes even TV open, just blabbering on the background). I have noticed this same thing at my office where I just can´t manage to get things done if there is not other people to talk to and socialize around. The best option is to sit next to a meeting that really doesn´t mean a thing to me and just reply to emails.... (am I the only one thinking this way?)

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier D&B is the best soundtrack to writing something! It has strict and fast tempo that gives your body a nice template start pushing text into blank paper. The atmospheric stuff usually doesn´t have huge climaxes that would interfere concentration. Same can be said about the lack of vocals. And it has hypnotic enough vibe to sink your thoughts deep into the subject.

Of course I have tried numerous styles of music for this purpose, but for example basic 4/4 beat just doesn´t work (not even minimal techno).

Well, this was just a brief mention... now let´s get back to business (ie. thesis writing).

Corto Maltese - Theatrical adaptation

Yesterday I went to see a theatrical adaptation of one of my favourite comics - the adventures of Corto Maltese, written and drawn by Hugo Pratt. This was something I had been looking forward since the first time I heard Q-Theater @ Töölö, Helsinki, was going to make the effort!

Yes, well... Corto Maltese truely belongs to top ten of greatest comics ever along side with several legendary creations such as George Herriman´s Krazy Kat. I have been enjoing these since my childhood when I found the lot first time from the local library. It´s funny how the first readings were so strong events since the books are far from being easy to being understood. Corto Maltese has always had such multiple and parallel levels of ingredients that every single reading has opened new views to the experinece. As a youngster it was the adventurous elements that got my interest (and also the sophisticated drawing that is so simple and comlex at the same time), but later on when re-reading the classic albums I noticed the deep and intellectual side that was so inadvertently embedded inside the story with such a strong emotional content that yet again I was astonished of the sheer quality of Pratt´s work!

But about the play itself - It is again good to notice that when done with love and care it is possible to make very good adaptations from very difficult material. It´s important to realise that the play presents only a part of Corto Malteses saga and some parts may be a bit hard to understand if you are not familiar with the original material but these things have been fixed effectively by importing parts from quite a lot of books to make clear some of motives of Corto! There is parts from at least six adventures total and the whole does work well. For a random watcher the greatest problem propably is the amount of sideactors that play important roles in different era´s of Cortos life and therefore some events may seem a little bit strange (most notable the appearance of Pandora). But it doesn´t matter as long as everything seems to support the needs to move and dream on... My only true critique considers the somewhat hectic events during the first half as I think the comics most important factor always was the serenity and slow philosophical thinking. Fortunately there is some excellent slower moments in the play that downshift the movement!

The Acting and the use of space is yet again excellent! Tommi Korpela as Corto Maltese is just so real and like a mirror image of Corto that the dobbelganger theme is inevitable (and suits part of the play wonderfully). Jani Volanen does really strong role as Rasputin and the rest of the crew doesn´t crumble behind! Kreeta Salminen as Venexiana has so romantic and hot aproach that you just can´t keep your eyes of her!

Oh, two things that buggered me a little were the use of music and smoke. I personally think that some parts with Hard Rock and Techno just didn´t fit in that well, but overall the soundscapes were good. There was also quite a lot of theatrical smoke and smoking of cigars that almost made me cough at times. Even though it belongs to the world of Corto Maltese it seemed a bit too much some times.

Anyway this is highly recommended!

Tripomatic Fairytales - a story of Jam & Spoon part 1

As a tribute to my past heroes of music and culture I hereby present the first chapter of writings! This one is about my favourite production partners: Mark Spoon and Jam El Mar! And it comes in two parts, stay tuned!

First I offer everyone a treat: Just finished scanning an old Muzik mag pages from august 1997 (issue 27) containing a three page interview of Jam & Spoon from their german promo tour when the Kaleidoscope album was released:

Now that´s interesting to read! You must notice the rock´n roll insanity behind these guys motives! It´s important to understand that this text is written in time when electronic music was at it´s peak in destroing all the traditional music styles (ie. rock music) and bands like Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and such had made their impact and were finally coming hugely popular. I even remember a cover from famous British Metal magazine; Metal Hammer where they were forced to admit that the Prodigy was taking Metal to very different direction. The Germans were not left behind even though their angle differentiated from the one that Brits had taken.

Continental supergroups were in one end like Scooter (which made music for the lowest common denominator with really cheeky aproach. I will get back to this business later but not in this text) and the other was dominated by these post war escapists who made the debauchery into form of art! Sven Väth is one of the notorius examples of this genre but I personally think that only Jam & Spoon managed to take it to the absolute limit!

I´m really sad that I didn´t make it to see their live shows or even a Dj set from Mark Spoon ever. I did try though and I should have the flyers still somewhere about the parties where Spoon should have been playing. Unfortunately as he was well known to be very complicated person every single gig that I was going to attend was cancelled for strange reasons. The last attempt was propably a year before Spoons death (that was 11.01.2006).

I do have another Muzik mag from around 2000 where Mark Spoon was awarded by the Caner of the year trophy for most insane acting in the Dj Scene (I´ll try to scan that one too if I find it somewhere). He was also known for beating up customers, club owners and generally behaving badly under influence... Well that´s not the point of this story so now on I will concentrate on their productions!

My understanding is that Jam El Mar was the one with greater production skills and Spoon was more like the front man with Djing ability and the character, but this is just a guess since no real evidence about their studio work has passed my path. The reason that I believe this is the case comes from realising Jam El Mar´s production career started years earlier in the 80´s (Spoon was a Dj troughout 80´s). Another fact is the amount of solo releases and remixes Jam has produced. In the end it doesn´t really matter because both were obviously very good friends and the productions would not have existed without each other´s contribution.

Jam El Mar or Trancy Spacer (or even Rolf Ellmer) made early records himself and in groups, most notable with Dj Dag (Dag Lerner) as Dance 2 Trance. This outfit that preceded Jam & Spoon (though their first album was from 91) basically consisted all the elements that would follow in the later years. Excellent trax include P. Ower Of A. Merican N. Atives, Where is Dag?, Hello San Fransisco, Take a Freefall and We came in Peace. All are good examples of early trancelike sound that was uprising during those times around germany. This sound was heavily influenced by such artists like KLF that had made lush trancey remixes of their big hits. Power was propably the biggest track and a huge hit all around the clubland. Their success propelled literally hundreds of poor copycats! And finally the whole eurodance phenomenon was created by inspired producers from this platform Dance 2 Trance was presenting (I´m not saying they were the only ones that contributed to this genre but they definitely were influential). Dj Dag does need his own praise too but I´m not going to concentrate on his works here (I should propably write something about the German scene generally and definitely about Love Parade and Mayday -parties).

Jam & Spoons story began within legendary R&S label with the Tales From A Danceographic Ocean ep that contained excellent songs: My First Fantastic F.F. was really experimental techno and trance fusion but the really huge track is of course infamous Stella which introduced classic Hold Me Love Me sample (or was this actually singer Plavka who was contributing to great part of Jam & Spoons records later?). The funny thing here is that My First Fantastic F.F. contains same samples as Stella but also the famous samples from Twin Peaks also used by Moby in the legendary Go! I haven´t heard myself but I know that moby actually ended up remixing Stella later on... Anyway around this time british label REACT released Age of Love by Bruno Sanchioni (of BBE fame) and Giuseppe Chierchia with Jam & Spoon Watch Out For Stella Club Mix that was to became on of the most well known classic trance record of all time! It´s funny how they decided to use this opportunity to promote their own production but since both releases are stellar it really doesn´t matter! These two trax together already gave them the legendary status they have in the scene even know!

The release of Stella predicted the forth coming album but who would have dared to ask what was coming? Tripomatic Fairytales was devided into two albums 2001 and 2002 former being more dancefloor orientated work of progression and genious and the latter being one of the most innovative and relaxing chill out albums in the veins of greatest Balearic records (for example William Orbit´s Strange Cargo III). Absolutely everything works brilliantly in both of these albums, from Right in the Night´s hypnotic (and a little cheesy) melodies to Stella´s sophisticated progression to 2002´s chantings and african drums and psychedelic phonecalls. They just work! Find Me (Odyssee to Anyoona) was also released as a single. It is pretty good single but the most innovative track was Follow Me! that was included in the b-side of Right in the Night. Now this one is fine example of the driving and goalike hardtrance that would soon follow! In any case if you have even the slightest interest of the beginning of the European dance movement you need both Tripomatic Fairytales!!!

There is strange information about including and removing trax from these releases and one that was not in the original albums was Angel. This time the better song was however Can You Feel It that was also on the b-side! Heavily acidic hardtrance monster and very much recommended! It also has som resemblance to the next project Jam&Spoon's Hands On Yello - You Gotta Say Yes to another Excess (uff die 12' mix) which in my opinion is the best hardtrance / Europian Rave anthem ever! Hands on Yello as a project was something out of this world, all the remixes are brilliant but Jam & Spoon steal the moment, mainly because Yello is propably the godfather of their sound and appearance! Everything seems so natural in this context and yes the excess is total excess in the case of the song and Jam & Spoons legend!

James Blake versus Mount Kimbie

I really wish that James Blake´s (self titled) album would have similar qualities than Mount Kimbies Crooks and Lovers did have. I mean if it doesn´t it is going to be one of the biggest disappointments of the year!

Though Mount Kimbies effort was not as good as the previous ep´s had been and I must admit that I was expecting way too much from them it has grown over repeated listening to be quite well composed and interesting experimental organism. Their sound is definitely original and presents sort of tinkered maximalism. On the first listen there was already hints of great arrangements and some of the trax left me wonder how these should be working (and propably thinking about the right environment). Now, after half a year I think this is among the great electronic music albums even though it has some flaws in, say continuity...

Blake´s album however has not started to fly yet. I have listened to it trough few times now and still don´t get it. First problem was the printed lyrics, why are these here. It doesn´t seem to say anything that important and the poetry behind is not that clever. Similar artist such as Burial have left this kind of nonsense away from the covers and concentrated to leave as much as possible to listeners imagination. The songs themselves are much more skeletized than I thought they would be and in most trax the voice of James Blake himself seems to be the only noticeable element available. Of course there is deep bass here and there and some percussions and stuff but it all seems too easy.

One of the big problems with the album is that the compositions feel like old English christmas carrols! I mean it feels somehow cheap and the melodies are repetitive in a manner that gives me this weird impression. I may be alone with this argument but listen to the last track "measurements"! I just can´t get this idea out of my mind when I keep listening to it. Some vocals are very irritating and it seems that Blake is holding something back all the time. It´s like he´s afraid of letting the songs grow and sticking to the minimalism as a safe ground for being intelligent.

In discogs I gave Blake´s album three stars out of five but this is propably going to be lowered to two if I can´t find the clue behind his sound. Mount Kimbie deserves four stars for their set and I really wish they enhance the sound that was present at the ep´s to a full scale album one day.

Amount of Snow is Amazing!

Today I participated in huge snow shoveling job (three hours) and almost forgot how nice the winter made the environment look like earlier. Here is some pictures I took from my surroundings:

Cornelius Tacitus - Histories

Roman history has always been one of my areas of interest. "The Histories" written by famous Roman writer Cornelius Tacitus is the latest book I have read about the classic age of Roman Empire (it was a Finnish translation from the original latin source).

This book concentrates in the period of 69-70 ad, the year when four emperors ruled and the empire was driven into civil war. All begins when Emperor Galba (ruler who was risen to power when the emperor Nero was defieted) was getting old and there were discomfort among legions about who should be his successor. Galba had noticed the turmoil and was trying to call his protege to be the next emperor. However this was the final straw for some of the army groups and they shouted Otho to be their ruler and when Otho arrived with his legions to Rome all hell broke lose.

After Otho´s men killed Galba the actual civil war was eventually going to expand since most of the german, gallic and british groups were not going to stand for such a decision. They gave Vitellius their commanderhood and started campaign against Otho´s newly formed regime. And so on until after some misfortuned battles Otho committed suicide. Tacitus describes Vitellius as a lazy person who was more fond of debauchery than actually benefiting the nation. This was also the reason why Vitellius regime was not in unison trough out the empire and soon the southern legions commander Vespasianus decided to take part on the race and challenge Vitellius´s groups.

I shouldn´t go further with the actual events except noticing that in the end Vitellius was defeated and several things followed. The Book ends with a chapter about the Great Jewish Revolt but this has not been preserved. However I want to make some notions about the life and roughness of the ordinary people and military during those times. First of all you have to keep in mind that Romans were at their peak about their Empire´s success then and it is this fact that brings strange light to actual living and prosperity in the empire.

What really buggers me is that the Military troops were so unpredictable about their decisions and the discipline was so hard to maintain. Minor revolts were everyday events and the leaders were all the time in a situation where they were forced to persuade troops to be loyal to their closest leaders and even for the emperor. There seemed to be lots of rumors always circulating about other peoples loyalty and deceit. People were also very superstitious and everything that happened could be interpreted as an omen (ominous or fortunate). These events could in a sudden moment mean that the troops would stand against their commander and even killing of leaders happened.

One of the main motivation behind military troops seemed to be looting instead of securing the empire´s peace. This lead to situations where a legion was relocating and manoeuvering forward the combat zone in their own territory (inside the empire) where they completely destroyed and robbed unfortunate and innocent cities that were on their way. And when they had a battle within a city that was inside the empire some of them were completely burned down, all the inhabitants were killed and raped.

Realising how huge the empire was (even todays standards) it´s also very impressive how they managed to keep up maintenance for such a huge force. The military had at best over a million soldiers (though most of the times the amount of troops was around 400 000). A single legion had about 5000 soldiers and lots of hangaround people (merchants, slaves, etc.) and all of them had to be kept fead and armed.

Rome itself was a city of over a million people and the surrounding areas couldn´t offer enough grain to feed the inhabitants. That´s why they had to ship food from northern Africa! The logistics were really impressive!

Finally I recommend this book very much to read if you have even a little interest about the real life during antique times! It gives a nice overlook about times and describes the turmoil of Roman Empire quite well. It also gives some advice why the Roman Empire was finally divided and demolished a few hundred years later.

Practice, practice, practice

Last couple of weeks I have been very busy practicing my turntable skills (as I have mentioned earlier). This is due to my new equipment which seems to work quite well. Yesterday I dug some old hard techno records from the vaults and gave them a spin. Boy was that fun!!!

It´s funny how I now notice the big difference playing different styles of music. When spinning house or trance you have to try to find suitable moments to enter and use the intros and outros to create a constant flow. You also have take care of the harmonies, check out the places where there is breaks and remember if any vocals have been used. It´s very usefull if you are aware about the composition of the full track and know for example where the bass drops for the first time. I have now got used to make the transitions using individual channel sliders and using the EQ knobs only to drop certain levels down. This seems work particularly well at the moment.

Overall you have to try to make wholescale compositions with the tracks and it´s usefull to plan the setup in advance. The whole thing turns upside down when the style changes to techno. Now this is real improvisation, all I have to know is that the tracks are basically in the same tempo range. The rest is just picking basslines and percussions from one track and embedding them to the next! And now the EQ turns into a playstation! I can keep two tracks playing at the same time and let the drums fuse into a different sounding mutant of driving monster dancetune! Yesterday was the first time that I thought it would be nice to own third turntable to make transitions easier and still keeping the playfullness alive! I believe that I would be able to learn to use this kind of setup to create nice oldskool techno experience.

Offcourse I´m aware that this is nothing new to anyone deep in the game, but I wanted to share the revelation I got from these recent sessions!

Superstitious Technomix

Here we go again! This time it´s all about rave and hard trance from the 90´s! I must admit that this mix was all but easy to make and there are lots of bad shifts from track to another (I will listen this few times and if it sounds horrible I will record it again). Fortunately all the songs are excellent! And this is yet again 100% vinyl and 0% Digital bullshit !-D (yeah yeah, really wish I could afford to buy cd-players!).

During those times producers used to create very hard, strange and often long atmospheric intros and outros. They sound wonderfull if listened separately but make the continuous mix very complicated to create. The tempo was often pretty hard. I started this mix with negative pitch but still ended up having problems with some tracks that I had chosen. Few songs had also several excellent and actually quite different remixes and I had to make some compromises to manage to create good flow (for example, I would have wanted to use Mijk van Dijk remix of the Hypnotist´s song, but it was way too hard to mix in that point of set). I also had to change the first track to Future. I would have wanted to use Velocity - Lust from the other side of the 12" but it had REALLY weird last half and was virtually impossible to mix into anything with my current skills.

Anyway here is the tracklist:

01 Velocity - Future (Superstition)
02 Jens - Loops & Tings (Remix) (Superstition)
03 Marmion - Schöneberg (Marmion Remix) (Superstition)
04 Paragliders - Paraglide (Blue Sky Mix) (Superstition)
05 Steve Maison Experience Movement - Let There Be Rhythm (Mix To Heaven) (Think Green)
06 Three´n One - Reflect (Misjah Remix) (Low Spirit)
07 Lords of Octagon - Open da House (DMD)
08 Virus - Sun (Jam El Mar Remix) (Perfecto)
09 Quench - Dreams (Sirius Music)
10 The Hypnotists - House is Mine ´96 (Baby Doc Remix) (Rising High)
11 Lunatic Asylum - Meltdown 2000 (Hitch Hiker & Dumontdt´s "Love" Mix (Nebula)

TEKKNO LINK

- edit -
Just listened this once trough and there is some slighly irritating mistakes but nothing too horrible. Bigger problem seems to be that I recorded this a bit too loud. Therefore some clipping occurs and the levels wander little.

Recent activities

It´s all gone, Pete Tong

A co-worker gave this movie for me to watch. I was happy because I have been thinking of checking this out some time already. It was bit of a disappointment though. I´m a huge fan of clubbing movies such as Human Traffic, 24 Hour Party People and Studio 54 and I was expecting something in the similar vein. In a way I got it but the big problem there was that I personally see clubbing as a exceptionally good way to express your self by dancing and trough music and this film was from the beginning only the debauchery of disgusting people in the dirty side of the game. The main character does not change into good person by logic transition. The evolving goes a bit imblausible ways. The best thing however is the producer who has all the really bad and really good qualities tied together. Overall it was ok entertainment but was lacking the credibility for actual change of the characters.

Tuulamon tortut (or Mokkapalat)

I got these pastries for my birthday present and I´m not able to describe how much I love the taste of them! Everyone seems to have their own name for the square pastries topped with cacao and butter cream and nonpareils. This time the nonpareils were citrus flavored to give them a slightly different edge. I could just munch hundreds of these! The big secret here is that you should put the fresh baked things into fridgerator and keep them there for two days. Taste multiplies in this time and the sweetness goes straight to the base.

Mystery videos

Can´t describe what this video is about. It´s way too deep into some insane businesses. The only important thing is that it has music made by Error vs Toshiba (though the videos says that it is solely made by Error which is wrong or even error).

Error vs Toshiba - Green / Purple (Video)

This one is a rare Error vs Toshiba video. Heavily influenced by some german hardcore techno, Green / Purple is part of the more aggressive side of this semi-legendary boy band´s material!



Lego animation has always been big favourite of the ever experimenting posses repertuare. Following short video is also embedded in one of the guys music videos. I will upload that too if I can find it...

Nightmare Helsinki Records

I used to make music with trackers years ago (alone and with some friends). When I did things solo, I decided to create a "record label" to release the results. back then I lived in Helsinki, hence the name. The nightmare part comes from my favourite band C-Tank. Unfortunately most of my trax are now gone since my previous computer broke down and I couldn´t save the songs. I may have some of these backed up in some obscure cdr somewhere and if I happen to find them I will most definately put them available here. Anyway here´s the first seven covers of these releases (I know these are pretty amateurish but I don´t really care).

Actually about the not caring part, a little bit of philosophy: I personally think that it is more important to do things than worry about the quality of the output. If someone doesn´t like the stuff they are always allowed to ignore it. Perhaps I should write a separate essay about this thing and particularly from the music point of view.

I also have to admit that I was more concerned about inventing funny song titles and photoshopping covers than actually producing music. Therefore only part of the releases ever were finalized. I used to get music done only when I was producing it with my friends.

I will write more about the software and equipment we used later if I find at least some of the lost tapes....

Learning the Art of Mixing

Today was yet again time to rehearse my mixing skills. I have been Djing years in various occasions but haven´t ever really tried to enhance my ability to play smooth shifts from track to another mainly because it takes some time and patient to really advance in this field.

Anyway now that I have found the time I´m struggling to get better results. There are some things that make the progress slow. First I have always thought that I have some knowledge about which songs would fit together but at the same time I think that playing should be improvising and not to program your setup in advance. I have noticed now that when my skills to find correct beats is not that good (and especially fast enough) I really should not improvise. Today I tried to make a soft oldskool progressive house mix with lush and interesting beats but in the middle the set turned into a "kiksu" mayhem with no logic and actually wrong versions of somewhat good tracks.

It´s just that when I get the feeling to play tracks I don´t seem to have the patience to do my homework and plan the set ready to play. Todays set was also way too fast because I somehow didn´t notice that the first track was quite upbeat.

I´ve got quite a lot of breakbeat tracks too that I should try to include in these mixes. It´s just yet another thing that would need more training.

The good thing is that my setup seems to work now pretty well. I also have some ideas about dubstep, electro and techno and acid mixes that I should try soon. And it seems that I´m missing some tracks that I have always wanted to own and include in some mixes so I should probably check some of these from discogs...

My Setup

Because music is one of the main reasons to write this blog I hereby present my setup and collection to give some idea in what level I´m on at the "game". My collection is somewhat problematic in terms of form. First of all I collect music in all the possible formats. I have a huge collection of CD:s and particularly CD singles (which is probably the most dead format of all) but I also do have a huge set of vinyls! Here is some pictures to give you the idea.




I have lot´s of MP3´s and even C-Cassettes but those are not the preferred formats at the moment. I have recently updated my setup the way that I hope 12" vinyl would gain advantage in the future.

About the setup: I have two Technics SL-1200 MK2 direct drive turntables. These are the so called industry standard (even though Panasonic announced last autumn that they will end the production of these classics). The ones that I own are real warhorses that have been in a professional use for years. I bought them used from a good friend of mine about six years ago (the joke here is that I have been collecting vinyl way over ten years and didn´t have any kind of turntables before).




Recently I bought new Headshells and Cartridges because the old ones had worn out and actually rusted trough. Both headshells are Technics´s own but the Cartridges are from Stanton and Ortofon. Stanton one is a classic 500-II model. It´s trustworthy and strong and will not brake easily. Problem is propably on the sound side that is not as dynamic and good as some hifi people would like these to be.

Stanton 500-II

The other one is Ortofon Night Club MKII. This one I bought last week and haven´t tried that much yet but it really feels good. I had some other ideas about this cartridge but got this one pretty cheap as it was slightly used.

Ortofon Night Club MKII

Weakest link in the setup is my mixer. It´s quite old Gemini PS-626 Pro-2 model. Here is a short list of problems I´m having with this at the moment: It has a ground noise that comes and goes without any logic reason. It sometimes loses left channel sound from all the main channels. The cross fader leaks from both sides. Most of the knobs feel like they are not properly attached. And the whole feeling is cheepish... I´m probably going to invest in a new mixer soon.



Here is my soundsystem: The old and reliable Technics Rack that I bought over fifteen years ago! I really don´t have anything to complain about this, it just rocks! The speakers could be better but they are good enough.



I also have Sennheiser HD25-1 II headphones. At the moment I don´t have proper cd players but I´m thinking of getting one or two. Anyway, since I bought the new cartridges and such, I have had new kind of inspiration to play with my records. Hopefully this enthusiasm is here to stay!

Rare Exports

I´m not a big fan of Finnish film industry and the last time I went to see a finnish movie in a theater was almost ten years ago. Yesterday we decided to go and check out Rare Exports and damn did my hopes for the better Finnish films increase a lot!

Yes, yes, it´s the different kind of Christmas movie and it has all the elements that a good fantastic film needs! The basic idea is excellent: Coca Cola did not invent Santa or "Joulupukki" that refers more to a goat than a red hooded fellow with sales on mind. Film is trying to avoid cliches and in places where it drifts to these territories it has a different angle.

Rare Exports is combination of horror images, ruffness of Lappland life, extremely beautifull landscapes, a real dramatic course with simple reasoning and therefore genuine feeling of alive people and fantastic sequences of imagination. But the greatest thing is the cast! These actors are definately the greatest that are available in Finland at the moment and Tommi Korpela leads the pack!

I remember years ago when I saw the Maximillian Tarzan and Ukkonen short movies and thought that it would be extremely good thing to let these guys to direct feature films. I was however convinced that it would never happen due to local film industry being driven by such a scheme that was concentrated on copying basic dramatic lines from international blocbusters and avoiding own ideas. It was kind of like the local music industry suffering years of "iskelmä" based music and supporting classical training in, for example singing.

Now that we are seeing movies made in internet (Star Wreck, Iron Sky) and the technique coming closer to the everyday users hands I´m hopefull that the big screen films would get competition from enthusiastic hobbyists that would throw all the assumptions to trash bins and do lots of low budget movies that would be out of the box and have some really fantastic elements tied to them. And form the local and fresh viewpoint too!

All Hooj Choons mix vol. 1

Now this one is the real first instalment of my Old Skool mix series. It´s all about my favourite label: HOOJ CHOONS! The mix is 100% vinyl mix and I´m finally quite proud of this. There were some mistakes and bit too hasty changes but overall it went quite well. Hooj Choons will be my target for several other mixes in the future too...

01 HOOJ 72R Jark Prongo - Moving Trough Your System (Slacker Software System remix)
02 HOOJ 59 Viper - The Twister (DEA Remix)
03 HOOJ 47 Antic - The Ultimate (Original)
04 HOOJ 92 Medway - Airacobra
05 HOOJ 127 Gardner & Thomas - Turn To Try (Full Vox)
06 HOOJ 119R Flash Brothers - Captured (Joshua Collins Remix)
07 HOOJ 120 Echomen - Truth (Original Mix)
08 HOOJ 132R Echomen - Thru 2 You (Original Vocal Mix)
09 HOOJ 111P 16B - Escape (Driving To Heaven) (Omid´s Full Vocal Mix)
10 HOOJ 93 Pete Lazonby - Sacred Cycles (Quiver Mix)

LINK

Power Grid -boardgame

I have not had too much time and opportunities to play board games recently. Fortunately last friday we tried Power Grid for the second time. It´s just incredibly good and addicting game. I had similar thoughts about it from the first time around but now that we tried it again I´m very convinced! This is at the moment the greatest board game available!

The game itself is somewhat complicated at the beginning, but the complex rules are quite intuitive in the end. The idea is to compete against other players about building power plants and to provide energy materials to them.

You are constantly trying to manage your limited monetary resources to buy better plants, to provide fuel for the said plants and also to create a sufficient chain of plants around the map with cities that are connected with power grid. You will also need to count the costs for moving electricity between cities.

The greatest thing in this business is the logic behind buying fuel for the plants. This has been designed following the logic guidelines from the real life system where the costs rise if some material is more wanted that the others. For example in the beginning of the game the coal is very cheap material to use for your plants, but if everyone concentrates to build coal burning plants the prices will go sky high and the availability of the material may diminish or even end totally. At the same time some better materials, like burning carbage, is cheaper in every following turn. And if you manage to get hold of wind turbines, they do not need fuel at all (though they are quite hard to get and the bidding for these plants are furious). Only complain is that the game developer gives bit too much advantage for using nuclear plants.

My player opponent also thought that it would be good idea to create a sales logic to sell the rights to pollution levels.

We have now tried this game with 4 and 5 people and both seemed to work very well. The game play was also quite different both times and there was no straight forward winning method available. Actually the games were very intensive to the final rounds and it was never obvious that someone would be in better position than the others in the end game. The game takes pretty long time, both times over 3 hours, but it was never dull in any point of the game.

More information about the game from here:
Power Grid @ Boardgame Geek