[MP3] 'Love Missile F1-11': Kompleksi Covers Sigue Sigue Sputnik

Kompleksi has now created a cover version of Sigue Sigue Sputnik's legendary 1986 hit 'Love Missile F1-11'.

'Porno Tampere' by Kompleksi vs. Polytron on Bunker Records (NL)

Kompleksi's collaboration track with Polytron, called 'Porno Tampere', is featured on the upcoming compilation 12" "Artists Anonymous", out on Holland's leading electro label Bunker.

More info

[MP3] 'Spiders in the Sky' & 'Gothic Robots'

Two new tracks added to Kompleksi's MySpace site: 'Spiders in the Sky' (made in collaboration with the mighty Unidentified Sound Objects of Helsinki) and 'Gothic Robots' (another collaboration with Citizen Omega of Vaasa).

'Spiders in the Sky' lyrics
'Gothic Robots' lyrics'

(By the way, Seth Brundle is the main character -- played by Jeff Goldblum -- in David Cronenberg's 1986 remake of The Fly.)

More Finnish Nuggets

Pasi Lehtomaa lists his candidates for the "Finnish Nuggets" in his 60s garage rock book Ritarien varjot - autotallirokin aatelisia (Pop-Kirja 18, published by Pop-Lehti magazine of Tampere in 2005):

Blues Section: 'Call Me On Your Telephone'

Buddy and the Wiremen: 'Shanghai'

The Careless: 'Desolate Time'

The Downwalkers: 'I Don't Believe You' [recorded in July 1966]

Jormas: 'The Loco-Motion'

The Needles: 'Dying Man'

The New Joys: 'Kevät'

Lehtomaa also rates such UK acts that were popular in the 1960s Finland as The Kirkbys with their 'Don't You Want Me No More' and 'Thirteen Women' by The Renegades.

[MP3] 'Bioluminescence' by Kompleksi

You can now hear the Kompleksi track called 'Bioluminescence' (made in collaboration with Vaasa's Citizen Omega aka Mr. Eero Salminen) at Kompleksi's MySpace site. (The lyrics here.) I also changed a new Kompleksi pic (see above) to the site, where you can see our oh-so-ultra-sexxxy mugs and that pHallic symbol/landmark towering over our homebase Tampere: the Näsinneula observation tower.

There will be more MP3s of our tracks there soon, but so far we've experienced some technical problems in trying to transfer soundfiles... Also, 228 friends/artistic influences on Kompleksi's Friendspace when writing this.

pHinnWeb To Be Deleted From Wikipedia?

I just checked http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHinnWeb. "Gimme a reason to keep this" had kindly posted a proposition "that this article be deleted, because of the following concern":

"Fails WP:WEB: no media coverage -- Does this outfit really deserve three articles: him, his site and his recording studio?"

What does this "no media coverage" exactly mean? What kind of media are we talking about? Do the past mentions of pHinnWeb in such magazines as The Wire, de:bug, Future Music, Muzik, or Finnish City, etc. count?

Also pHinnMilk Recordings entry ("no claim to notability") had met with up this same fate too. (By the way, pHinnMilk is not a "recording studio"; it's just a small CD-R label run by me.) Only pHinn entry seems to have met with those Wikiboys' blessing.

Well, whatever... these people have got their own reasonings. Their favourite way to justify themselves is to claim that "You know, there are rules" (in the way of Orwell's Animal Farm of some animals being more equal than others, I guess?), and so on.

And this inspires me to divert quite a bit. I guess there's a sort of human type I've never learned to understand, a sort of people who love honing facts to death (some call this "nitpicking") and being eternal besserwissers -- unfortunately, besserwisserism has a tendency turn into lesserwisserism: paradoxically, the more one learns and knows about the complex workings of this world, the less one in fact knows; since although seemingly there are no limits to knowledge, there are limits to understanding.

Their little world will probably just collapse if they can't have their say on everything, have a control of every tiny fact. Their world, which they so dutifully strive to keep in order, is in fact a house of cards unable to stand even a tiniest breeze. Wikipedia is probably the ideal playground for them (don't get me wrong, I think as a concept Wikipedia is wonderful; I obviously just don't get the mindset of some individual people editing it).

Is this Asperger's Syndrome? Anal retention? Sociopathy? (Well, just look in the mirror, Mr. pHinn!) Oh well. I suppose this is a kind of thing that is in no way in my own hands now. The end of another therapy writing session, pHinn signs out for now.

Haastattelu: Mr Velcro Fastener (sorry, Finnish only)

http://www.phinnweb.org/5HT/interviews/mrvelcrofastener/

9. maaliskuuta 2006 - Mr Velcro Fastener eli Tatu Metsätähti (alias Mesak) ja Tatu Peltonen (alias Ted Field) Turusta on saavuttanut nimeä maailman elektropiireissä pian jo vuosikymmenen ajan. Duolla on takanaan lukemattomien maksien, remixien ja kokoelmaesiintymisten lisäksi kolme pitkäsoittoa; viimeisin, nimeltään Telemacho ilmestyi helmikuussa 2006 Velcrojen omalla Stars-Music -levymerkillä. Turun Tatut ovat tosiaankin kiertäneet muutakin kuin tahkoa: Velcro-herrojen live-keikkoja on nähty ja kuultu ympäri maailman. Oli siis korkea aika pHinnWebin laittaa pojat tenttiin, vaikka se kaikkein hölmöin kysymys unohtuikin tällä kertaa...

Kompleksi Joins MySpace Mania

It seems to be in vogue for any musical act to open their own pages at MySpace, so now also Kompleksi has one. I wonder how many friends will we get...

http://www.myspace.com/kompleksi

Haastattelu: Pauli Jylhänkangas (sorry, Finnish only)

http://www.phinnweb.org/5HT/interviews/jylhankangas/suomi.html

8. maaliskuuta 2006 - Pauli Jylhänkangas tunnetaan parhaiten diskohenkistä elektroa tuottavasta Putsch '79 -duosta yhdessä Sami Liuskin kanssa. pHinnWeb haastatteli Samia jo vuonna 2003. Samana vuonna Pauli julkaisi omalla nimellään hollantilaiselle Klakson-levymerkille 12-tuumaisen nimeltä 'Clutz'. Olen törmännyt Pauliin kerran jos toisenkin erinäisissä elektronisen musiikin tapahtumissa Tampereella, joten uskaltauduin kysymään, josko miehestä olisi jo aika tehdä aivan oma haastattelu pHinnWebiin. Pauli suostui, ja lopputulos on tässä. [Paulin valokuva: Sakke Karipuro]

Muse Is A Harsh Mistress

[Deliverance by Kalervo Palsa, 1978]

Fighting the chaos of existence by trying to be as creative as possible, but will the creative urge turn against itself? Will it only bring on more chaos and entropy when one finds oneself living in a constant state of excitement, eventually draining one's lifeforce as the manic phase inevitably turns into a depressive one? Why are so many artists ridden with mental disorders; being nervous wrecks, alcoholics, drug addicts or [add any clinically diagnosed mental affliction here]? Why does the artist's muse tend to be in so many cases such a harsh mistress?

The intrinsic quality of an archetypal shaman is oftentimes the suffering from some sort of mental affliction; being somehow "broken" but managing to put oneself "together". That is one prerequisite of having a healer's gift, of being able to help others -- that one has gone through that "dark night of the soul" and managed to return to the daylight (relatively) safe and sound -- but irreversibly changed as a person.

As everyone who has gone through psychoanalysis as part of the therapy knows, bringing up some hidden subconscious material from the depths of one's psyche can be an ardous, straining, painful and risky, even perilous process. The therapeutist's, the healer's, task is to work there as some sort of guide, pilot, when sailing through these stormy, dark and dangerous waters. What make's the artist's own journey similarly not less filled with perils is that the artist, in one's creative work, must face these same subconscious and potentially fatal depths nearly all the time.

Unless one is just an able craftsman, the sensitivity needed in creative work depends on such a fine balance, often maintained just by the sheer power of will, that is very hard to keep constantly steady, without any unwanted disturbances intervening. Magic, after all, is a combination of will and imagination.

See also:
Mutants

The Best Underground Man in Tampere 2001

City magazine of Tampere has this annual competition called "The Best of Town". There are different categories, such as the best restaurants, clubs, specialized stores, persons in some specific field of life, and so on. In 2001 I was chosen as "The Best Underground Man in Town".

Above you can see the diploma I was given. This "award" was the subject of some hilarity among certain aquaintances of mine: it may be thought that if a trendy "style guide" like City chooses you as the best underground man, that will probably demolish all underground credibility one might hope to possess. Anyway, this may be considered the zenith of my "career"...

(By the way, Mika Rättö of the band Kuusumun Profeetta and other various artistic activities was chosen by the local City mag as the Best Underground Man in Pori, also in 2001.)

Polytron vs. Kompleksi: Porno Tampere Limited Edition CD-R EP

[Skip this entry now if you're under 18.]

Here's the cover art by Spektakl GrapHiks for the extremely limited edition (of 2!) of the Porno Tampere CD-R EP by Polytron vs. Kompleksi, released back in August 2003.

The track 'Porno Tampere' will be in its finished studio version on Kompleksi's debut album Sister Longlegs Dances In A Disco, out some time in 2006. Also final versions of other tracks on this EP (all Kompleksi originals) will be found on the album.



Finnish text: "Grandma and me."



Finnish texts: "Don't move, Vieno-Inkeri." "It feels so good!"





Finnish texts: "Jyrki Hämäläinen - 'My wife knew about the prostitutes'" "Fuck yeah!"

A Siberian Midwinter Night's Dream

[large]

Reminiscing those extremely freezing days of January 2006...

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pHinnMilk Comics (not for children)

Tammerforce Pics

Here are some pictures taken by Sakke Karipuro on Tammerforce electro night in Tampere, Friday 24 February 2006. The live act was Mr Velcro Fastener.

pHinnWeb Chart March 2006...

... can be found here.

Eclectic, me?

[MP3s] From Shogun Kunitoki's Tasankokaiku CD

Listen to full length audio samples (mp3/96kbps) from Shogun Kunitoki's brand new album Tasankokaiku ("Plains Echo") on Finland's Fonal Records:

'Montezuma'

'Tropiikin kuuma huuma' ("The Hot Heat of Tropic")

Soundwise this instrumental album with its droney organ-heavy sound makes me think of Terry Riley (especially his 1968 minimal drone masterpiece A Rainbow in Curved Air) , The United States of America (a great experimental 60s band) and The Doors!

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Listen to more Fonal Records material at Fonal Jukebox

Lukas of WFMU on YouTube et al.

Lukas of WFMU has also checked out YouTube and other free video hosts such as http://video.google.com/, and compares them to the early Napster.

Right now these sites seem like a video version of early Napster, combined with lots of vanity stuff. There are many gems among tons of garbage, and I suggest you start downloading the good stuff now before it is too late. Earlier this month, NBC forced YouTube to take down a Saturday Night Live video, and I bet that this is only the beginning of legal battles to come.

If you found anything you like from my 1960s and 70s-80s listings, I also recommend you in the real anarcho spirit to download it to your own collection before the megacorp lawyers cut in. If my instincts serve me right, it won't be long before that happens...

Inhokkilistat (sorry, in Finnish only)

ooooo-postituslistalla on nyt ollut thread ihmisten henk.kohtaisista musiikki-inhokeista, joten koska olen laiska mies, enkä keksi tänään muuta kirjoitettavaa blögiin, niin kopioin oman kontribuutioni keskusteluun tähän:

Nyt kun sitten on kollektiivisesti päästetty katit pöydälle ja avattu matopurkit...

- kaikki tylsät, statukseltaan lähinnä seinäpaperin kiinnostustasolla olevat ja tapahtumarikkaudeltaan kuivuvaa maalia muistuttavat, Velvet Undergroundia kopioivat indieorkesterit, joiden ohuella äänellä lauletuista biiseistä ei jää mitään päähän.(Originaali-VU, jumalatarmaisella Nicolla tai ilman, taas kuuluu pHinninkin kotialttarille Barrettin ja Scott Walkerin viereen... no niin, siinähän teille jo artisteja mollattavaksi, kun massiivinen retaliaatio pHinn-setää kohtaan alkaa tämän viestin jälkeen. Ja eiköhän ole taas aika avata teknopaskahomo-threadi uudestaan... [vuoden 2000 keskustelu em. listalla, joka sai pHinnin tuohtumaan pahanpäiväisesti ja häipymään ovet paukkuen ooooo:sta reiluksi vuodeksi kunnes ooooo:laiset ottivat kollektiivisesti hatun kouraan ja rukoilivat pHinniä palaamaan kyseiselle postituslistalle, mikä ele sai (anti)sankarimme liikuttumaan ja heltymään.]

- Tigerbombsia en nyt varsinaisesti inhoa, ja ne ovat varmaan mukavia ihmisiä ja hyviä tyyppejä jne., mutta en oikein osaa innostua näistä "vuoden 1979 parhaista bändeistä" vuonna 2006... Musiikilliset pastissit eivät muutenkaan innosta, kun voi kuunnella niitä alkuperäisiä (puhun nyt tässä itseni pussiin ja ammun itseäni jalkaan ja nivusiin, kun juuri teimme Kompleksin kanssa M.A. Nummisen 'Kirkko, rakkaani' -raidasta vanhan koulun elektro -tyyppisen remixin) -- toisaalta taas eri retrotyylejä kiinnostavalla ja luovalla tavalla sekoittavat uusartistit toimivat pHinnWeb-bunkkerissakin, joten en voi olla tässä asiassa paavia paavillisempi.

- Sunn O))) (vai miten *itussa se kirjoitetaan): olin keikalla, ja kerrassaan kammottavaa pörinää ja örinää hupullisiin kylpytakkeihin sonnustautuneilta äijiltä. Kiinalainen vesikidutuskin olisi ollut viihdyttävämpää. En ymmärrä.

- kaikki metsäetnomusiikkiopiskelijavillapaitainkapipofolkki, jossa mou'utaan naukuvalla äänellä keijuista aamukasteessa ja vingutetaan pirunviulua yms. aiheuttaa lähinnä narkoleptisen nukahtamiskohtauksen (nerokkaita Kemiallisia Ystäviä en laske em. joukkoon). Sortsit vaan kaikille alan ihmisille.

- improvisoitu musiikkikaan ei ole juuri hirveästi auennut toistaiseksi. Pidän sit kai enemmän epäspontaanimmasta, epäluonnollisemmasta ja laskelmoidummasta lähestymistavasta; enemmän kylmästä kuin "lämpimästä" musiikista. "Aitous" ja "luonnollisuus" ovat konstruktioita muiden joukossa. Suosittelen lukemaan J.K. Huysmansin teoksen Vastahankaan ("À Rebours", 1884), joka tuli hiljattain suomeksi. Vive l'artificialité!

t: pHreplicunt, epäihmisen ääni

I Am A Camera

The idea that one should be a camera/microphone recording everything around oneself and saving it for the posterity of future generations. For this purpose listening carefully to people's vernacular and generally observing: how they talk, behave, drink, love, hate; how they dress, what records they listen, what they watch on TV and at cinema, what books they read (if they read at all), and so on and so on. Being an outside observer there; maintaining an illusion of being impartial, of not participating, just watching. Even though this is not exactly true -- probably Bohr and Heisenberg were right with their Copenhagen Interpretation: that even an observer of a scientific test will inevitably have an effect on how the test will turn out, even though having a fallacious illusion of not being a participant there. You see, people tend to act when a camera is present; it's hard to act "natural" when one is aware of being watched. There is no reality-TV.

"Esse est percipi" ("Being is being perceived") - George Berkeley (1685-1753)

The Buggles: 'I Am A Camera' (7" single, 1981)

John Van Druten: I Am A Camera (a 1951 play based on Christopher's Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin; filmed 1972 as Cabaret, starring Liza Minnelli)

Indiavision: The Weird and Wonderful Sound of Bollywood

I'm well aware that Bollywood (India's extremely proficient counterpart to Hollywood) was in vogue among hipsters (or the people who think they are those) already a couple of years ago, but I only got really into Bollywood's amazing soundtrack music, when I found from local library Metso this 16-track compilation of Indian film music from the period of 1966-1984.



Indiavision (2005) is a French-compiled selection of those weird and wonderful Bollywood film composers and singers. What fascinates me in these songs is how they take influences from Western film and popular music (rock, pop, psychedelia, disco...), mix them with their own musical heritage and instrumentation, and turn them into something that is simultaneously innovative, strange (at least to our Western ears), funny and beautiful.



Among sitars, tablas and Western-type of film orchestras with strings and brass you can hear spiky 60s and early 70s type of wah-wah pedal guitars and even some analogue synthesizer sounds. The songs are in Hindi but every now and then include some suitable catch phrases in English. Most bizarre this is in 'I Love You' by Usha Iyer and Asha Bhosle, where the lyrics "I really love you / I really do" are combined together with a cheery "Hare rama, hare Krishna" mantra; then at the end of the song one of the singers asks in hipster English: "Can we go a little faster, man?", receives an affirmative "Yeah!", and the tempo of the track duly speeds up.



Strange tempo changes are not the only things making this not too similar to Western pop; the songs often consist of various parts of different styles which follow each other in a surreal, even dream-like logic (just like the plots of most Bollywood films). These songs in their style, making one think of late-60s psychedelia, go somewhere beyond cheap exotica or "world music" styles. Like Brazilian Tropicália, this is truly a sound of international fusion of taking Western styles and mutating them with home-grown influences into something new and amazing. Since this compilation stops already to the year 1984, I can't tell how Indian film music today is, but if they keep following the tradition at display here, it really must be something to check out.



See also:

Indian Psych



Bollywood clips @ YouTube