Club Kasettiasema 2009
Is it or is it not the fact that even this summer it is the Club Kasettiasema in the weirdly sweaty premises of Café Kerubin Kuppila that offers the most memorable festival experiences? Probably this is indeed the fact, as the shows seen at Club Kasettiasema in previous years have had a habit of speaking to a multitude of audiences in a very profound manner. And again this summer, the festival in, with and beyond the festival brings you food for thought that can be digested and ruminated at least until the next Club Kasettiasema! There will be bands, troubadours, DJs and other performances that those lucky enough to be present are going to remember with fondness, exhilaration, horror or heartburn in the presence of their friends, family or therapist from here to the unknown future. Once again, all this mental capital is up for grabs at a ridiculously low price. At Club Kasettiasema, one can grow as a person and leave behind the earlier regrets, or replace them with new ones. This is your stepping stone, trampoline and conveyer belt straight to a new, more enlightened level of humanity. Your personal guides on this journey through the valley of the shadows and stage lights are:
Friday 17 July
Karoshi Lovers
After the last orders, a dramatic pop melody suddenly crashes into a punk rock riff. They share a taxi on their way to the afterparty, where they trip the light fantastic to danceable rhythms and phenomenal power ballads. Next morning, the entire Western way of living starts to look like a dark tragicomedy. On Monday, the comic elements don't look very laughable anymore. Sudden death beckons and looks like an alluring option.
The themes of Karoshi Lovers' dramatic pop are almost intolerably heavy, but their musical expression is uplifting. Who wants to get depressed when the heart sings along to the voice of Ms. Stress and the toes start tapping against the reassuringly nonchalant floor? Throw your worries to next week and whistle your way to the minimalistic dance floor of Kerubin Kuppila. It is not easy to find names to drop that would in any manner compare with anything that Karoshi Lovers have ever accomplished, so the only option to get to know Karoshi Lovers' soothing company is to move your rear end in early enough this Friday. Balm for troubled modern spirits, at Club Kasettiasema!
www.karoshilovers.com
myspace.com/karoshilovers
Supo
The drums, the bass guitar and the masculine vocals, that's all they need in the heartlands of Savo, the proudest of all Finnish provinces, in order to set up a swinging but serious rock'n'roll band. These instruments alone are enough to create a hellish racket that's sure to be to your liking if you love, to name a few institutions, Mötorhead, Nomeansno, R. L. Burnside, Finnish salty liquorice or fist-fighting comedies by Bud Spencer and Terence Hill. If you don't love any of these, then you're a worthless idiot anyway and you should stay home instead of irritating civilised people with your sad presence. If, on the other hand, you do love them, then Supo's gig is not to be missed.
The members of the trio and/or their lookalikes have spent their pasts and/or presents with such combos as Cosmo Jones Beat Machine, Rubik, Vectors and Black Peider, many of them familiar from the past of Club Kasettiasema too. The atmosphere is ungovernable like that in a folkrace competition and the bass amplifier turns into something resembling a black ice cream cone; it's pure twist and torsion at Club Kasettiasema.
Viola
The kings of heart-breaking invitations to dance, Viola floods the house with tearjerker melodies and funky beats with an irresistible force. Viola is the Hall & Oates for indie kids, the all-time super duo that creates an exhilarated dance fever lickety-split even in a Goth disco or at the hour of devotion of a Carmelite convent.
Viola's songs are tops, but that accomplishment is just too petty for their violent ambition. Every month, they release a new song on the band's homepage, and are happy to share their entire back catalogue at no cost. They truly want to go for avant-garde both in making their music and in distributing it. Not to forget the wild background films they're showing. This is the 21th century, goddamit! But luckily for us, at Viola's gigs all this technical state-of-the-artness is balanced by the awkward jokes in between songs, mildly irritating technical problems and other human boo-boo. And every now and then, the melancholic disco tunes are swapped for raw rock'n'roll, so no need to worry, you hairy-faced leather-booted devotees of that barbarous musical genre called rock. Advanced technology, dirt-cheap Casio keyboards, at Club Kasettiasema!
Saturday 18 July
Damn Seagulls
Stop press! Don't press that quick! Damn Seagulls have a surprise for you!
Those who arrive to Kerubin Kuppila at about 9 pm on Saturday will be totally surprised by an unanticipated spectacle that is Damn Seagulls throwing a surprise gig at the ever so unpredictable Club Kasettiasema! The undreamed-of acoustic set will flabbergast the startled audience with its surprising out-of-the-blueness! Come early and be stupefied! The surprise show may also contain an unexpected striptease show by the band's manager, but we are not supposed to reveal everything yet, are we!
www.damnseagulls.com
myspace.com/damnseagulls
Janne Westerlund
As the vocalist of Plain Ride, Chainsmoker and Sweetheart and the guitarist of Circle, Janne Westerlund has contributed to so many of the best Finnish albums ever that it's downright mental. It is an intolerable injustice that the Government is still hesitating with its decision to award this man a life-time working stipend so that he can continue with releasing the greatest tours-de-force that the Finnish culture has ever seen. Plain Ride's third album House on the Hill still combines hypnotic groove and overwhelming tenderness in a miraculous manner, but maybe even more miraculous is the fact that Janne Westerlund can create a similar hypnotically tender atmosphere even at a live occasion, and even when he's playing solo. Nothing more is needed to tear your heart out of your chest than one man, one guitar and one banjo; no room for loud shock effects now, no no. This is genuinely unique music without a hint of artsy-fartsiness in sight, and the songs are wickedly good. Hypnotic therapy by cornerstones of modern Finnish audible arts, at Club Kasettiasema!
Pharaoh Pirttikangas
Cosmo Jones Beat Machine's frontman P. Pirttikangas has found his own inner pharaoh and, along with it, a slightly more light-heartedly foggy means of expressing the voices inside his head than he does in his main job. The bottom sediments of blues, the folk pop hits of Arctic and Tropical peoples, the voodoo of Sa-voo and outer-space kitchen sink dramas all find their way as the fillings of the same kalakukko, which is then used as a packed lunch on the journey to the unknown. And if you're already been to Tallinn, Las Palmas, Kihniö, Paris or Ikea, why not try the palm beaches of the unknown instead this time? Not too many tourists around, eh?
If music means more to you than a stream of equally irritating pop hits to listen to while you're doing the dishes, it's the right thing to do to direct your steps towards Kerubin Kuppila and see Pharaoh Pirttikangas's show. Watch a spiritual travel channel at Club Kasettiasema!
myspace.com/pharaohpirttikangas
The Sultans
Läjä Äijälä has been spearheading the innovation of at least HC punk, electronic music and rockabilly. During his long career, he has also gathered quite a trail of followers from all corners of the world. Common to all Äijälä's musical projects is his tendency and ability to simplify the expression into its bare essentials, and with The Sultans he strips away all that's superfluous in blues boogie with such a fervour that eventually there's nothing left bar the plain core. A good example of this is The Sultans' album that came out in April. It's so good that by rights, making music should now be stopped, because The Sultans have already made every song in the world.
Unassuming drumming and simple guitar riffs are the only, very minimalistic elements of the duo's music. But, either in spite of this ultimate simplicity or right because of it, The Sultans' boogie is packed full of events. Less is more. And in order to like this music, you don't have to be an art school graduate. On the contrary: The Sultan's uncomplicatedly rolling rhythms are just the kind of music that can be appreciated and danced by any half-witted weight lifter who has just passed out in the back corner of the bar after dropping half of his kebab dinner on his shirt. The Sultans takes you to the eternal core of blues, and there's room for everyone in that core. Boundaries between super- and subcultures disappear, at Club Kasettiasema!
Sunday 19 July
Monsteriser
Hairy-faced metalheads from the Southern Karelian towns of Lappeenranta and Imatra playing metallic stadium grunge with a genuine Karelian-American touch on the tiny stage of a semi-artistic special event. Whoever heard of such a sure-fire recipe for success! We've been promised immensely skilled down-tuned riffs, superhumanly accurate vocal performances, unabashed posing during the guitar solos and hungover armpit fart humour. The frontman of the band, Miitri Aaltonen, is known at least as the productional power behind the albums of Mokoma and Stam1na. He's quite a hand at producing his own records as well. The drummer Janne Hynynen is known, besides for the fact that many times he has polluted the atmosphere at Club Kasettiasema as the DJ Zack B. Sexual, also as the little brother of his much better known big brother. The guitarist Antti Toiviainen is easily the acest guitar hero in Imatra. And the bass guitarist Tommi Suonpää is known for the fact that nobody knows him, not least Tommi Suonpää himself.
The melodic riff thunder of Monsteriser is going to blast your worries into oblivion. Say goodbye to heartaches and heartburns, back problems, eczema and the overall lack of meaning in your life. Find a haven of solace at Club Kasettiasema!
www.monsteriser.com
myspace.com/monsteriser
Black Audio
Every year it is more and more obvious that the people who are booking the bands for Club Kasettiasema are first and foremost booking gigs for their own bands. That's the reason why Black Audio and its members are in the line-up year in, year out, for want of any real festival gigs, poor things. And again this year, there is an opportunity at Club Kasettiasema to see how a grown-up man finds his freedom in rock'n'roll. It's not a beautiful sight, but at times it's OK to listen to. And remember, you could be watching something much more awful. Like once at a festival there was a lard-assed man, burnt flaming red in the sun, dancing stark naked on the roof of his car with a sixpack cover on his head and singing Finnish schlagers. I had to go and boil my eyes after watching that for a while.
Every single one of Black Audio's chaps has got their clothes on, promise. And their songs are better than Finnish schlagers. All ingredients for an exploding rock'n'roll party are there, if the Sunday audience at Club Kasettiasema is in a suitable mood for needing some freedom. Ingredients of explosion, at Club Kasettiasema!
Black Magic Six
A man-made machine munching over rhythmical punk boogie, Black Magic Six used to be a sextet as their name indicates, but then the vocalist-guitarist and the drummer came into their senses, sacked the other pantywaists and decided to concentrate on what really matters. That is, on moderate boozing and whole-hearted gigging. And it's true that in the heat of a live occasion, the duo's hammering instantly reaches dizzying dimensions. Only two lads, and they're going wild like they had twelve legs! Their ass-kicking energy has also been saved for the latter generations with the album Evil Acupunction, but why listen to that when you can watch them play right here, right now?
BM6's blues punk merges together all the devil's music there has ever been, from Robert Johnson to The Cramps to Venom. Here a pitch-dark undertone cries under mirthful groove and Elvis-style vocals. The dark side of rock'n'roll has always been more alluring than the well-lit side, and the spiritual journey of this summer's Club Kasettiasema will end at the Gates of Hell and to the lake of eternal fire, which, to be fair, is where every exhausted festival goer should end up when the weekend is over. Welcome to burn in the flames of hell, at Club Kasettiasema!
www.blackmagicsix.com
myspace.com/blackmagicsix
And it's not even going to stop at that, because this year like every year before a number of flabbergasting DJs contribute to the unique atmosphere at least as much as the bands do. This summer sees at least one super show mashing up old Finnish hits with reggae rhythms. That formula equates Finnish reggae, the saddest musical genre in the world! Other Club Kasettiasema favourites, i.e. DJ Karate, DJ Digitaalinaiset, DJ Diskoteek, DJ Yhdistetyn Maailmancup, DJ Coco El Macd, DJ Vierailu Huttulassa, DJ Hintsanen Party Projector and DJ Just Hyvää Läppää have the decency of selecting truly fine songs for the party people to listen. And there's always the risk of being exposed to all kinds of surprise shows by surprise performers. The best audience, the best atmosphere, the best artists, again, at Club Kasettiasema!
Club Kasettiasema 2009 — Program
Friday 17th July
Karoshi Lovers
Supo
Viola
+ Kasettiasema dj's
—
Saturday 18th July
Damn Seagulls
Janne Westerlund
Pharaoh Pirttikangas
The Sultans
+ Kasettiasema dj's
—
Sunday 19th July
Monsteriser
Black Audio
Black Magic Six
+ Kasettiasema dj's
Niskakatu 16, Joensuu
www.kerubi.fi
