Finnish music

Delay Trees & Waterloo

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delay

Delay Trees

Delay Trees is a good reason for you to start planning some sort of cake/shoe attack against me. I got this beautiful record as a promo a few months ago. I really liked it and yet I still never wrote anything. Exactly how bad person am I? Pretty bad at least in this case. Lazyness is a bad excuse. Before my guilty conscience drives me insane, I try to make amends with this quick blog entry.

The Soft Construction EP is full of insightful and tender pop music. It’s a very beautifully crafted and thoughtfully arranged little record. A few times it almost becomes too ambitious for me, because I prefer simple things and simple songs. But even for me, it never gets too far and the core of the song is never lost. It remains in your heart. A lot of high profile pop releases will struggle to reach the level of this self-released beauty.

Delay Trees Website
Delay Trees at myspace
 
 
Waterloo

Guilty conscience part 2. I’ve also known Waterloo for quite a long time, but I think I have never mentioned them at onechord.net (their previous life form The Dance did feature though). I’m not entirely sure about the name Waterloo, but there’s no worries in the music department. There are no official releases available, but you can listen and download songs from their myspace. Maybe that one real killer song is still missing, but this is really good guitar pop nevertheless. Looking forward for more.

Waterloo at myspace

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Finnish music

Jill Nissinen, Olento & Kaseva

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Olento: Jill Nissinen
 
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLJR9Kb9fxM]

Thank you goes to Darwin and Räkärodeo mailing list for this one. He praised this song there and I went and check it out once, twice.. well about twenty times. I’m definitely in love with this song. I think it captures all that was great in the finest finnish 60’s/70’s pop/”iskelmä” ballads. I could picture someone like Kaseva singing this back then and that is as high as a praise can get. The mood of the song is a perfect match with the lyrics and that voice is so warm that it will melt your heart even if you have built an iceberg around it. I don’t know anything about Olento or Jukka Kokkonen (apparently the man behing Olento), but Jill Nissinen is starting to feel like a close friend after listening to this song over and over again.

Olento at myspace
 
 
Kaseva:  Turhaan huudat mua
 
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvaEdGH3n5g]

Because Olento somehow brought Kaseva to my mind, I checked out whether there were any Kaseva videos at youtube. There was and this one above took my breath away. Now that is what I call singing and that’s something that I would like to see nowadays as well. Just drum set behind and four guys in front all singing their hearts out. For me harmony vocals is the most important part in music and therefore seeing something like that just completely blows my mind away. The clip is from Yle 1 program Pop-Liisa from 1976.

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Finnish music, Finnish music videos

Finnish music videos from the vaults part 1: The Sugarrush & Elliot Scale

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Maybe this linking of youtube videos is getting out of hand in this blog, but I’m still going to start this new section and add some old or new finnish pop videos once or twice in a week. It’s an easy & quick way to praise the bands that you love. And on the plus side I also remember to watch these videos of songs that once meant a lot to me. And well still do, because I just end up watching that Sugarrush video about ten times in a row.

 

The Sugarrush:  Stereo

The best way to start is throwing in The Sugarrush’s Stereo. A video that I’ve probably seen hundreds of times and I don’t even think that’s an exaggeration. The Sugarrush is the hardest rockin’ pop band in the world and one of my own huge favourites.  Stereo is an opening track of their second album Mirrorball Ballerinas that was released back in 2001.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMAWnGGmIfY]

The Sugarrush at myspace
 
 
Elliot Scale: Innerspace

Elliot Scale’s Innerspace featured in the Meet The Scene compilation, but unfortunately the rest of Elliot Scale’s excellent song material was never officially released, because sadly Olli Linna (aka Elliot Scale) passed away way ahead of his time in 2002. Olli Linna was a great musician, producer and an all around nice guy.  He featured in bands like Time Flies and Cartoon Tree, but Elliot Scale was his solo project. It’s a shame that he never had the chance to finish that Elliot Scale material, because he had a lot of great pop songs. I lost those mp3s in a hard drive failure few years back, but thankfully Innerspace is still available at youtube.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK0w8vi9cWs]

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International music

Emitt Rhodes

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emitt

Just before hitting the sack, myspace alerted me with a friend request from Emitt Rhodes Band. It appears to be that Emitt Rhodes is back in the studio making new  music. Other big news is that there is also a documentary coming out and last but not least. Universal is planning to release a four cd box set of Emitt’s solo albums. Now that would be worth of one of those onechord.net imaginary culture awards. Emitt was a truly magnificent pop songwriter (often compared to Paul McCartney) in the early seventies and especially his self-titled album is a true classic.  Unfortunately most of his records are nowadays out of print. Is there anything other available than Rev-Ola’s The Merry-Go-Round best of that has The American Dream as a bonus (The Merry-Go-Round was Emitt’s band before solo career. That is excellent stuff as well). Therefore it has been a struggle to get hold  of these masterpieces. I’m actually still missing the Farewell To Paradise album. I sincerely hope that plans of the box set are true and some myspace geek isn’t just winding me up. It would be about time to let newer pop generations learn the greatness of Emitt Rhodes.


The Emitt Rhodes Band at myspace

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