Map at the National Museum of Finland

After three winter weeks in Helsinki, I’m beginning to appreciate why Pan Sonic’s music is so blisteringly cold and gloomy: the weather gets to you. If you’re not familiar with Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen’s sonic warfare, give this a shot:

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Pan Sonic – Teurastamo
from Kulma. Mute, 1997

To my mind, Pan Sonic and the Sähkö imprint have always defined the sound of Nordic techno, and its stern and unforgiving tones map nicely onto the cultural stereotypes in my guidebooks:

The Finnish people are a near living embodiment of their harsh winters; frosty, uninviting, bleak and quiet – so very, very quiet. In mid December you can walk for miles in Finland without hearing a sound, the weather’s probably gloomy and you won’t ever get properly warm. At best you’ll have icy feet, and in all probability you’ll be getting cold shoulders as well.

— Helsinki: The Bradt City Guide

Entertaining yet useless generalizations to be sure, but does a common thread connect different Finnish techno records in the same way as, say, the anthemic chords of vintage Detroit tracks or the dirty growl of Dutch electro? One must be careful when attempting to tease out national characteristics from electronic music, the shadowiest of genres, or else you would be led to believe that Detroit is optimistic and Holland absolutely debauch. Nonetheless, I can’t help but listen for a pattern as I attempt to understand my new home.

First, some classics:

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Vladislav Delay – Endor
from Helsinki/Suomi. Max Ernst, 1999
Before he got mixed up with Luomo, Sasu Ripatti made beautiful, sprawling techno that kickstarted a handful of wonky sub-genres — micro-house, ambient dub, click & cuts, etc. — and subsequently helped broaden electronic music’s ambitions. The first half of “Endor” chugs along with admirable restraint until a subdued locomotive melody lifts it off the standard minimal tracks and heads in the direction of his 2001 ambient masterpiece, Anima.

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Sami Koivikko – Hermonik Lost
from Salmiakki. Strike, 2003 | buy mp3s
Koivikko’s music bounces right out of the gate, busy and sparkling and catchy as hell, always draped in melody upon melody that adds up to one beautiful machine. In the case of “Hermonik Lost”, an old-school deejay break balances on top of a whirring stack of stretched-out rubber tones and it sounds like the obvious way to build a track. More fanboy talk about Koivikko here.

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Ø - Hyönteis
from Tulkinta. Sahko, 1997 | buy CD
Mika Vainio’s music frightens and thrills me. Here is sound as a pure physical force: sometimes it’s a fight-or-flight reaction or you’re pumping your fist like a lunatic. Occasionally you’re simply drifting to disorienting narcotic dreamscapes (read about panic-attacks at a Pan Sonic performance here). His Ø alias distills these qualities into its own unique high-pitched brand. Some tracks feel – and with Vainio you feel rather than hear – like air-raid weapons for dogs; others are a masterstroke combination of top and bottom frequencies. Either way, you never quite look at your speakers the same way again.

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Mr Velcro Fastener - Blue Screens
from Lucky Bastards Living Up North. i220, 1999
Mr Velcro Fastener draws cartoon electro-robot music that jumps and skitters like some lunatic child of Autechre, Anthony Rother, and Japanese Telecom. Tatu Peltonen and Tatu Metsätähti are among the best in the vocoder business: see “Real Robots Don’t Die” and “Cityscapes” for android future visions that sound comfortably at home between Kraftwerk and Twilight 22.

And now some newer tracks:

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Jori Hulkkonen - Enter The Fear: Who Will Be Slaughtered Next
from Katajanukke. Turbo, 2007 | buy mp3s | thanks to Keytars & Violins
A Giorgio Moroder-inflected bassline yields to a soaring and crashing strobe-light melody that gives Daniel Bell a run for his money. Hulkkonen’s been knocking out full-bodied tracks since 1995, and the years of experience shows in the Katajanukke EP, a classic four-track set that kicks off with a squelchy beat backed by woodblocks and a serious synthesizer workout in celebration of the sacred Finnish trinity: “To the Cabin, Sauna & Drinks!”

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Artificial Latvamäki - Ratts Leaving The Sinking Ship In Nortt
from Ratts. Curle, 2009 | buy mp3s
Artificial Latvamäki first caught my attention with his “Song To The Machine That Built the Sun” and the It Is Now Also Not EP, both bursting with generous melodies, buzzing machinery, and a loopy joy that recalled Carl Craig’s 4 Jazz Funk Classics. In his newest release, Latvamäki drills deep into the dark, opening with a solitary drum that bangs through a narrow tunnel of ominous hiss and clangs until the three-minute mark, by which time its acquired all of the elements of a properly structured techno anthem coated in the sharp glare of Pan Sonic. 

* * * 

Where does that leave us? Even after this superficial glance at Finnish techno, it’s tempting to search for a common theme. After all, techno is a niche genre and Finland is a sparsely populated country – if electronic music honors any cultural or national boundaries, one would expect to see it here. In a 2006 interview with Boomkat, Sähkö founder Tommi Grönlund’s take on the Finnish techno scene rides the line between humility and depression: “Musically (like in very many other respects) Finland was, and still is, a backwood of Europe. Generally young people are not interested in things like music. Ice hockey is popular here . . . It seems that some young people have read that there was a Finnish label called Sähkö in the last millennium, but I guess very few people here it give a second thought.”

On the other hand, Mr Velcro Fastener called their first album Lucky Bastards Living Up North. Such a schizophrenic attitude sounds appropriate because, if anything, there is an unmistakable tension between the light and the dark. The sounds are more extreme, fighting beneath a frosty sheen and buzzing sense of atmosphere that seems almost meteorological – but I am too far under the influence of the winter weather to be of much critical use today. Perhaps looking for a national sound is a fool’s errand and any cohesive personality is  due to the efforts of record labels or the whims of a particular summer. 

When it’s time to flip off the kick drums and seriously brood in the weak light of a Sunday afternoon, there’s Scarlet Youth, a full-tilt shoegaze band that nicely picks up where Slowdive left off:

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Scarlet Youth – Wave Goodbye
from Homesick Music, 2009 | buy it