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!

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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!