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Astrix this Friday at Clinic

12 February 2010

My all time psy trance hero, the israelian uplifting master Astrix is playing this Friday at Clinic’s 2nd Birthday event at Voimala in Helsinki. Astrix is responsible for such classics as ‘Massive Activity’ and ‘Solaris’. The line up is fulfilled with top notch finnish psyish DJs Indigo, Miazy, Polly, Poliisi, Proteus and myself.

I will play before Astrix who will first play a DJ followed by one hour live set. I’ll probably play a progressive influenced set combined from psychedelic prog house, techno and some progressive psy trance. Probably no full on this time as my slot is at 23:00 and anyway I mainly want to make sure that the main star has perfect (and not too hard) ground to build on.

I’ve also heard that they will have very nice sound system from Precision Audio (the same we had at LOVE) and some pretty special psy dude doing great decoration so it sounds like there is a great night ahead. Hope to see you there!

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Romance at Tampere

9 February 2010

Tampere. I love that city. I really do. It’s been 16 years since I played my first gig there at DJ Coma’s Feel event at an empty warehouse. Since then I think I’ve played some 40+ gigs there with Prodigy at Tullikamari, Miau!, liQuid, Taika, Metaverse & A Place Called Happiness tours and Trancexperience just some of the highlights. And it’s great that the recent ONE and Romance gigs have been equally great as the event back in the 90s.

Last Saturday’s Romance was no exception. It’s a house club promoted by the resident DJ Flight who is one of the definite highlights in the nu breed of DJs (and promoters too) in Finland during the recent years. Flight played the first and last sets and did a great job with deep and funky 126 bpm stuff in the early evening and some super groovy filter house during the last hour. The house was full, decorations adorable (rosebuds, red velvet and candles!), lights supa (thanks Uzu!) and people happy. Of course every great night seems to need it’s share of bad luck which this time came in form of fire alarm at 22:30 and some cutting bass amps but those didn’t seem to bother that much.

Musical highlights (to crowd at least) from my set included Pete Tong remix of ‘Two Months Off’, Dekay remix of Ladyhawke’s ‘Paris Is Burning’, Joris Voorn’s ‘We’re All Clean’ and as closing classic the still-oh-so-uplifting Klatsch’s ‘God Save The Queer. Thanks to all the old and new friends for the good vibes and talks and hope to see you next time in Tampere.

PS. If you are not aware of this nice city some 200 km from Helsinki feel free to check out this informative four minute piece in Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZCQvg0keRQ :)

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A 23 hour story: Redrum 2010 (5/5)

27 January 2010

Long sets need long promotion. And long time to recover. And a long story afterwards too! New Year’s Day 01.01.10 was probably my most special gig so far during my 18 year career. I must say it was also physically the most demanding. Harder than what I thought and I can definitely say that 23 hours is waaaay longer time to play than my previous 16 hour sets. Never say never, but I’m quite confident that this will never happen again… There were several other people who were there all the time and some hardcore music lovers who were dancing for 15+ hours. Maximum respect and a big thank you to all of you! You know who you are and it was amazing to watch you enjoy the ride all morning, day and night long. There’s something really freaky and special about seeing a club in full action in the afternoon. This is Helsinki after all and not New York or Berlin. And to me this is proof that Helsinki is truly a special clubbing city.

Of course there was also some room for hick ups within 23 hours. Like the bass amplifiers turning off at 13:00 or beer being poured into the light desk blacking out all the lights. But with some good karma and some professional people, those were fixed quickly. It was also my first gig ever to get women’s underwear thrown at me. It might have been some hairy guy from Tampere, but a nice gesture anyway! It was also the first time ever I had the security demanding to play one more track and also the first time ever my booking agents told me to move less while DJing. It was good advice as 23 hours is a pretty long time to even just nod your head, as my neck told me sometime after 15 hours or so… The mentally and physically hardest moments were probably in the late afternoon, when there was still many many hours to go but it felt like the party had already been going on for days. But it was the people and the music that gave me the energy and at 22:00 it already felt as if the party had almost ended:)

There were over 1600 people during the morning, day, evening and night with many of them visiting twice or three times. It was heartwarming to see so many old school faces after some time and amazing to see so many promoters, DJs and old school sceners (Chris, Taru, Kidi, Kimmo, Jani, Dallas, Oded, Asaf, Milla, Ippe, Huggu, Sam, Denis, Cia, Jari, Nikita, Jaakko, Jari…) on the dancefloor raving for hours and hours. It was also special to see so many familiar faces from around Southern Finland and even some people from around Europe making their first visit to Finland especially for this gig. And of course lots of fresh people bringing some new excitement and energy to the scene.

Production wise I of course can’t say how everything went as I was in the booth the whole time, but I heard that combining Redrum with Copacabana worked very well. Bars and toilets were feeling it at times but hopefully the smooth entry, enough chill out space, breakfast, a la carté and extra lights & decorations made up for the weak points. After all this was the first time anyone had tried this.

Musically it was quite an eclectic ride as I had hoped for it to be. Everything was totally improvised with the people, the moment and the vibe dictating my next track. Some old school prog in the morning, nu skool tech house in the afternoon, Ibiza terrace classics in the daytime, acid techno in the early evening, epic progressive house and trance classics in the evening, some early 90s trance and even a bit of rave during the late hours. Fave moments must have been the afternoon acid craziness with whole place shouting “ACIIID, ACIIID, ACIIID!!!” or Mory Kante’s Yeke Yeke at 21:00 when it looked more like 03:00! It was all recorded but let’s see if that will be shared at any point… Below you can find my Top 14 musical moments from the set.

If you want to re-experience the marathon chill out set provided by DJ Orion for the Ice Bar here is a link to the mix - 323 minutes, done on Dec 23rd with DJs birthday on the 23rd of February: http://bit.ly/orion323. To relive the moments here is what Finland’s biggets newspaper Helsingin Sanomat had to say about the event: http://bit.ly/hesari23. And here is link to some photos from the event: http://bit.ly/23gallery. And here is link to an eight minute Youtube video collague from the event. It’s more of casual compilation of videos from Peled Bros’ camera rather than a polished “official” event video. I hope the vibe comes through from it:)

And here are some of the my fave tracks from that set:

And as great things in life are always the ones shared and no success comes alone here are the ones I want to thank for making this happen:

Oded & Asaf: For co-promoting the event. You are the most professional yet the most passionate. These guys make things happen!

Tea & Severi: maybe the best show I’ve seen from you! There were so many ups and downs and twists and turns and you supported the story of music soooo nicely with the visuals throughout the whole 23 hours.

Markus & Otso: for making the place feel like something else for a day.

Jani Tolin: for some epic graphics with a tongue in cheek.

Lil’ Tony, Staffan, Sami, Petsku and the whole Redroom staff: for full support before, during and after the event. Years and years of work for keeping the vibe of the city alive.

Tuula and Tarja & Copacabana piipl: for believing in this crrrrazy idea and helping us make it happen!

Juska: for 323 minutes of audio bliss in Ice Bar and overall support.

Eppu: for making sure the sound was as good as it gets. Not everybody would want to work at 04:30 on New Year’s Day..?

Dallas, Federico, Hanna, Kassu and everybody else helping with putting things together.

Miller: for supporting the scene year after year and making things possible. Respect.

Anu: For everything.

And you, you and YOU for being a part of it. Thank you!  Thank.  You.

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Radio Unity 013 tonight

20 January 2010

Tonight’s Radio Unity (21:00-22:00 CET / 22:00-23:00 FIN) will be a re-run of my Afterhours.fm End Of Year Countdown old school trance mix. I received so many requests to make it available as download that I decided to make a Radio Unity episode of it. It’s mostly german and british trance from 1992-1994 with signature artists of the like Union Jack, Hallucinogen Oliver Lieb, Humate and Sven Väth (with his Metal Masters alias) all featured. To me this is the time when trance was truly born even if you can always trace it to Dance 2 Trance, KLF, Vangelis, Jarre, Klaus Schulze or just cave men banging bones to ground:) Hope you’ll enjoy the mix and you can catch me in the live chat at AH.FM board.

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A nine hour story: Taivas UG 1995 (4/5)

31 December 2009

My first all night set took place at our illegal underground club ‘Taivas’ in Vallila in July of 1995. We had been running  UG clubs previously with ‘Q’ in Kruununhaka in ‘93 and ‘Maa’ at the Hotel Presidentti building in ‘94. The spaces were officially rented to us as “dance studios”. As a cover story we explained that we will have to paint the room black and would be playing loud music so people could concentrate on their dancing.

Around those times underground after-hours were very popular with almost every weekend something happening around the city. Once again it’s interesting to think of the time before internet forums, text messages and email lists (there was fi-rave already then though). Information about the parties were distributed mainly through flyers that were handed out during the same weekends evening parties.

In Taivas we had rented a 100m2 space which was all dancefloor. When renting the place we also received the keys to a space where the toilets were located. It just happened to be situated in an empty 200 m2 warehouse room. A nice space for a chill-out perhaps? Oh yes indeed :) So every Saturday we built a bar/chill out room at this space and cleaned it after the party. The smell of 300 sweaty ravers is most probably still there…

There was a big group of us organizing these events with myself, Tero, Pia, Ari, Markus, Tube, Antti, Tea, Severi and many others doing it all together. The club was members only with a of couple hundred membership card holders, who could bring guests with them. Some of the hottest teenage DJ’s of the time, including Kiki, Ender, Oscar, Eliot Ness and Jester Moon were regular guests at the parties. We had Teja Kotilainen as the door man who ten years later had become Finland’s hottest A&R, signing the likes of Rasmus, Kwan, Olavi Uusivirta and even myself to Universal Music. It’s a small world!

I had decided to play the full 9 hours of the closing party, after our cover up story had been discovered and we knew that we would soon be kicked out. We had the line up of Orkidea, Rok Idea, ORK ku and DJ Tapsa and I even switched clothes three times during the night. Musical highlights included Josh Wink’s ‘Higher State of Consciousness’, Man With No Name’s ‘Teleport’ and Paul van Dyk’s ‘Emergency’. Around 8am the extremely angry janitor came complaining about the noise. Afterwards we gave him the remaining alcohol from the party, which put a smile on his face. PLUR was definitely the name of the game !

A year later Club Unity was started at Nylon, after a decision to try out legal events too :) It feels as this years LOVE events are still continuing that same story started at Oranssi, continued in Lepakko, Q, Maa and Taivas. Thank you all for all the great memories of the last 17 years. I hope that you will be a part of the fifth part of this series and the beginning of a new decade !

Here is the flyer for the closing party, designed by Wici Wickström.

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