The Music, The Sound, The Feeling

Funny thing. I just found out there are three French-Finnish duos in the world making indie music. I thought two were many.

So the two I knew about from before are The Dø and Mi & L’au. The third one is Eva & Manu who just recently released their first single in Finland called Feet in the water. It’s from an EP they released a year ago, but they seem to have had a low profile until now.

Eva & Manu is Eva Louhivuori and Manu Laudic. They met in Boston, USA while studying at Berklee College of Music where they became a couple. When they finished their studies they thought about moving to London, but then they realised they didn’t want to create music in some apartment somewhere.

So they bought a camping car (which they named Skipper) to drive around in and started traveling through France and Italy. They worked on different farms and kept a diary at the same time of all the things they experience, and from this diary they create their music.

Have a listen. It’s good stuff!

I just found the new Studio Killers video for Eros and Apollo! 

The animated band consists of a British, a Danish and a Finnish music producer and even though it has never been officially confirmed, everybody more or less knows that the singer, a.k.a. Cherry, is Teemu Brunila (former lead vocalist of The Crash from Turku).

Just pick any old The Crash-song and listen to that voice. It’s him.

Besides, I checked Brunilas Discogs-page, and it actually says that he is included in the group Studio Killers. All we need now is confirmation by the man himself on tape.

I actually found ALL the names on that Discogs-page. The two other guys are Darren Stokes and Philip Larsen. Darren has made music in the groups Tin Tin Out and Baby Blue among others and Philip has apparently done house music in various groups like Groove Collision and Bel-Air.

So now it’s finally out.

And yes, the new song is great!

Friday. 

I said FRIIIDAYYYYY!!!

You need to party. Here, have some music to get your groove on.

It’s Top Billin featuring MC So Hot It Hurts (a.k.a. MC Särre, Payperwork, Lost Cause, Lintumies, Lost Koos and so on) with the party hardy track Playboy Anthem (2009).

I’ll leave you to it then.

There’s always been good progressive rock to be found i Finland, starting with bands like Wigwam and Tasavallan Presidentti in the end of the 1960’s and lately continuing doing so with the Von Hertzen Brothers.

The band presented next is quite new though. They call themselves TOOT TOOT and they are guitarist/singer Timo Kämäräinen and drummer Olli Krogerus. Yes, it’s a duo. Yes, their sound is big despite of this.

Timo and Olli, who are well known musicians in the business, had been playing together in other bands for quite a while before they came up with the duo concept. And as things usually happen this came about through a coincidence more or less.

Back in 2009 they played as a trio in a band called Beagon. They had a concert coming up when the bassist informed them that he couldn’t make it to the gig. Timo and Olli decided to play anyway, and they discovered that it worked really well. The idea of the duo was sown and Timo started experimenting with big guitar sounds.

Their self-titled debut album came out in the end of March and it hasn’t really got the attention it actually deserves, so I’m doing my bit here and now by informing you. Check out the video for the track called Mr. B and if you have Spotify you can check out the whole album right here and now - here.

It’s the Wednesday Finn Classic and this time we take on a somewhat forgotten Finnish pop gem.

She’s a singer-songwriter who goes by the name Emmi Kangasjärvi, but as an artist she is known simply as Emmi. 

The song here is called Crashing Down, one of several much played radio hits from her debut album Solitary Motions (2001). 

So far she has released four albums, the latest being The Invite (2009), but the international breakthrough hasn’t happened.

Too bad. The tunes on that debut album were very good. Do check her out.

Here’s another four-piece band from Vaasa playing indierock/-pop. This one is called Timshel and the song is called Will You Be My Girl.

The song is quite good and has a nice and easy summer vibe going on, but the video is the real charmer and the actual reason for me blogging this.

As you can see it builds on Greek mythology and it’s apparently made by some students at the Novia University of applied sciences. 

Enjoy!

You have to hear this! And see too for that matter.

This is the most groovy retro britpop I’ve heard & seen in ages and it comes from The Casbah, a band that originally comes from Vaasa but that seems to have settled in Helsinki for now. 

They released their debut EP called Mach Schau in 2009, and die hard fans of The Beatles know that “Mach Schau” means “Make Show” in german. This is what The Beatles were told to do each night they played in Hamburg when they still were a small unkown band from England. 

After the promising debut of The Casbah everything went quiet for a long while. I now know the band didn’t die. It just paused while band member Julius von Wright lived in Australia.

Now that he’s back the band released an EP called All Eyes Open back in February this year, and on that EP you’ll find this wonderful piece of flower power called, er…Flowers.

It might sound a bit on the kitsch side from this description, but try it out. It’s worth it!

I just heard that Donna Summer passed away.

Dallas Superstars, a duo consisting of dj’s Jaakko ‘JS16’ Salovaara and Heikki ‘Heikki L’ Liimatainen, released this version of Donna Summer’s I Feel Love in 2003.

Rest in peace Donna. We feel the love.

More compensation for left out Wednesday Finn Classics this Thursday. 

This time I’m giving you a live video by Imatran Voima with the tune American Splendor from an EP with the same name released in 2006. The video was recorded at the Huge Bass event in Turku on December 16th 2006.

Imatran Voima consists of members Randy Barracuda and Fresh-O-Lexxx and they’ve been making underground electro together since 1997, first under the name Lazer and as of 2000 under the name Imatran Voima.

Imatran Voima translates to The Power of Imatra (a city in eastern Finland) and it’s also the name of a Finnish power company.