Last Saturday Legowelt, Orgue Electronique and DJ Serge had the honour to play at the fourth Helsinki Turbo party together with Opel Bastards. It was cold up north but the almost utopian-like Finnish scene had made a great impression on the dutch boys...Danny Blanco reports on a party were 900 people rocked Helsinki's largest club, the Tavastia...
9.00 Already a small crowd is waiting before the closed doors. The Tavastia club is still empty while we do our last soundchecks. Opel Bastard Timo prepares the last disco lighting effects. We witness the sight off a small rotating ball that timidly emits a few colored lightrays into the fog of a smoke machine. Timo, who is totally enchanted by his minimal lightplan, tells us that this is "Disco Heaven". And indeed it is, no VJing, no expensive computer controlled laser lights, just 2 little lights that will have the tremendous task to visual entertain the crowd in the large club tonight. Brave. 10' o clock: the tavastia club is slowly being packed with the Finnish party people. Local DJ's Ebony and Wilai play some cool The Hague stylo electro combined with old obscure proto technodisco songs. The atmosphere is warm and the P.A. sound is just perfect...already nothing can go wrong. 12.00 The first live act is the the hague electro-bass producer Brian Chinetti AKA Orgue Electronique. He proves once again that you can get a crowd of hundreds of people go mad on minimal le-carish melodies and electro rhythms. Shrewd as mr.Chinetti is,he kicks in the 4/4 somewhere in the middle of his last track leaving the crowd even more mad and wild then they already are. A well deserved warm applause is Chinetti's reward. Hmm...i'll stop the chronological hour by hour flashback review on go on in past tense... After some more slique DJíng by the local DJ's it was time for the OPEL BASTARDS! I already had heard some nice things on their Sagaratius 12", but seeing them live was unbelievable. while Timo controlled a crappy old analog sequencer and the 808, the other guys were playing and filtering shattered old synthesizers. Funky basslines with beautifull synth-solo melodies and vocals, mostly with silk vocoders. A kind of Drexciya meets Jimi Tenor, but with a completely fresh stylo of its own, I guess it just the Finnish dolce vita. A nice touch was when one of the Opel Bastards, dressed in a leather jacket and sunglasses (it looked a lot cooler than it sounds, believe me :) ), started doing a kind of funky hybrid dance-walking act, walking down the entire stage while the other guys remained completely focused on their machines, lighted by the brave lighting effects. A pitty they only played 4 songs though. After Opel Bastards, DJ Serge took control over the party. He played some booty electro bass and slowly shifted to some 4 on the flour deep chicago house to pave away the path for the next live act which was Legowelt. I started with my track I always start with (well, they hadn't heard it yet in Finland :) ). Things really started rocking when I threw in my new latino-technodisco song. Conga's and cowbells just give the extra edge. After playing 5 songs that seemed to have made quite an impact on the crowd (it was fun seeing people headbang on sturmvogel and actually reacting on every new structural change in a track :) ) it was time for DJ Serge again who was in the mood for some good electronic disco classics. Till the end, which was for dutch standards quite early, the crowd kept on going. Again we want to thank all the finish people (esp.the good care of Timo & Tommi) for one of the best parties we had in a long time. Schluss, D.Blanco
