How easy was it for you to discover house music in
your native Finland?
I discovered it in the late 80's listening to radio.'Ocsid' was the
name of the show. I definitely had a mental space for house, because any other music really didn't do the job for me. I was kind of waiting for
it to happen.
You used to promote parties - you tell us about your most memorable one?
Yes, i've been promoting parties since the early 90's. Mainly warehouse
parties in the beginning and then moving into the club scene in the mid
90's. My most memorable party must be from 1992. I did everything with
2 friends of mine, we built the whole thing in an empty warehouse. It
was great to see 1500 people in the middle of nowhere having a great
party. The police came down at 2 am, but instead of closing the illegal
party, we somehow managed to convince them we were filming an ad
campaign for a new bank card aimed at 15-25 year-olds!! OK, there was
some heavy camera and video equipment around - I nearly managed to
convince myself! The party went on till 8 am.
How did you meet Gigi, the vocalist on your Sam and Gigi
productions?
I met Laura (Gigi) over 6 years ago. I was studying industrial design
and Laura was studying interior architecture at the same school. We met
and after a while we were deeply in love - we've been together since.
So, Laura isn't just a vocalist. Musically we do everything 50/50. We
don't just collaborate as Sam and Gigi - there are other projects
coming up...
Is there a close-knit community of house music producers and DJs in Finland?
Not really. Of course, almost everybody knows everybody on the house
circuit because Finland is a small country. At the moment real house
music isn't very popular here. People are keeping things underground,
waiting for the trance/nrg/whatever boom to end. Locally people are
quite close-knit, but not nationwide. Good examples are a couple of new
labels that are joint efforts combining different 'underground
movements'. Check out labels like Vuo, Love City and X-Rust.
What are your views on electronic music being sold and distributed as digital files? Do you think the days of vinyl are numbered?
As long as it's not violating anyones rights and the money goes to
those who it is supposed to it's OK with me. When it comes to the
illegal mp3-scene, it's more tricky. I mean, mp3 might improve the
sales of a 12" in some cases. As a dj and vinyl collector, I think that
vinyl is here to stay. The user interface of a vinyl is so much better
than cd's. 12" vs. cd is like comparing a book vs a .txt-file! I also
play cd's, but mainly some own stuff or promos from friends.
What kind of production setup do you use?
Just software. We use Cubase vst as sequencer and Ableton Live when
doing a live pa. The only hardware we have is compressors, some
effects, a Shure 58 beta and a small mixer.
You're playing the Roskilde festival this year with Gigi - what's the format of your live show?
Haven't really decided yet. When we are doing a 'live' show it's
sometimes just Laura singing over the records I play. This is not the
kind of mc'ing like 'put your hands up in the air' or anything as
light-headed as that - she will have written new words, or arranged
some old jazz lyrics to my new tracks. Roskilde is probably going to be
mostly our own tracks or a weird mixture between dj and live set - and
we serve it chilled.
Do you agree there is a Scandinavian 'sound', and if so, what makes it unique?
I don't know if there's really a scandinavian sound in house music,
I've allways thought that the sound of house is universal - stupid as
that sounds! Of course your surroundings and cultural heritage have a
great impact on everything one does. We are sort of 'not in the
middle', {I think he means "left of centre!!" - Ed] so that's propably
why we like melancholy and distant sounds. There's a new finnish rock
band nemed 'Scnadinavian Music Group' though - I should probably buy
their latest album and check out this thing called the scandinavian
sound!
You are well established in Finland - are there any other examples of homegrown talent we should look out for?
Everybody must allready know Jori Hulkkonen, Tuomas Salmela, Luomo and
Sasse, so I wont be mentioning them this time, hehe. New and not so
well known talents that have allready recorded are J-P parikka (or
Jussi-Pekka), Juho Kahilainen, Timo Anttila, Sami Koivikko, DJ Shuffle,
DJ Sile, Acid Kings and many others. I wouldn't say that we are well
established in Finland though - people come to see our gigs and like
what they hear, but record sales for an underground artist is a common
joke! However at the moment our calendar looks quite busy, so we are
happy about that.
Describe your ideal night on the town, Finnish-style!
Hehe, how the hell would I know, I'm usually in the booth! If I have a
night off on fri or sat, I usually spend it with Laura (surprise!) But
it would probably first be some serious dinner business and some beers
with friends. After that to a pub to have some more beers and...even
more! Or if there's something interesting going on, then to clubs like
Kerma. Blake Baxter is playing in Kerma tomorrow and I have a night
off, so I'm probably going there. "Finnish-style" normally includes
enormous amounts of alcohol and some quite famous jocks have noticed it
too; probably not until the next day though...
Would you say a sauna followed by a dip in an ice covered lake is a good way to recover from a night's clubbing?
Well, it depends how many beers you had last night! A sudden 100
celsius drop in body temperature might be fatal for a person who is
still drunk or hungover!! So, I wouldn't recommend it as a cure for
clubbing! But, in general, it's great. You should try it, I can't
really describe the rush...
Most DJ booths are badly set up - discuss!
As long as there isn't a Pioneer mixer around, I'm fine. I think
Pioneer mixers sound like a can of tunafish!. I can't understand why
they have become such a standard here. Haven't really had a problem
with poor set-ups in the booth, mostly the problem is in the sound
system. I've played for 15 years now and as long as the turntables and
mixer are ok, I can do my part.
Tell us about your future plans.
After a way too long break in making music, hopefully more time for
music in the future. Remixing other artists would be fun. Also we're
going to travel around Europe after Roskilde for a month. The Koneisto
and ISEA2004 festivals in August are also marked to the calendar.
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