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!