Music
This year Alternative Party brings you plenty of cosmic sounds from outer space, mixed with some harmony of the spheres for good measure.
Aavikko
Aavikko (Desert) are influential veterans of the Finnish synth scene, well known at home and abroad. When they're not too busy recording eclectic-yet-very-much-danceable studio albums or composing theme songs for TV shows, Aavikko bring their retrofuturistic stage show to varying venues such as film festivals, cruise ships, rock clubs, and apparently to demoparties too for you to get your freak on.
On stage, Aavikko combine acoustic drums and vintage equipment to produce an intriguing hybrid of timeless melodies wrapped around futuristic themes and metronomically precise rhythms. All this while looking flawlessly stylish in the process, of course.
They play - we dance.
Carbon Based Lifeforms / Digidroid
Carbon Based Lifeforms (CBL) are Johannes Hedberg and Daniel Segerstad (né Ringström), both born in 1976 and based in Göteborg, south-west Sweden. They met at the tender age of 15 and are still, amazingly, working happily together, almost 20 years later. CBL itself was formed in 1996, as an offshoot from other projects, but soon became their focal point, culminating in their first release on ‘mp3.com’ in 1998.
Through their synergy of ideas, their aim is to combine earth and space in their music. It is hard to categorise CBL’s music but the best description might be that of a groundbreaking mixture of acid, techno and house music. Their creativity occasionally overspills into what become ‘new’ projects. The results can be enjoyed by listening to releases from Thermostatic and Digidroid that both play live at Alternative Party.
www.carbonbasedlifeforms.net/
www.digidroid.net/
www.myspace.com/carbonbasedlifeforms
Muffler
With a host of releases on UK labels, MUFFLER a.k.a KONSTA has certainly made an impact. He is one of the few producers who have had releases on almost all top drum 'n bass labels including MOVING SHADOW, HOSPITAL, DSCI4, COMMERCIAL SUICIDE, FORMATION, FREQUENCY, URBAN TAKEOVER and his own SIGHCO RECORDINGS
Early releases back in 1999-2000 on Urban Takeover were accepted worldwide by both clubbers and DJs and his CD album on Urban Takeover "Soundz Of The Future" has got a warm welcome too. Also his mix CD, which consists only of his own tracks for Knowledge magazine (April 2004 issue) got him some well-deserved attention. To date, Muffler has released over 50 vinyl singles, two CD albums and featured on various compilations. It's often been said that he is one of the most prolific producers in the drum 'n bass scene.
He plays regularly around the world, both club and festival gigs, in countries like: UK, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Germany, Spain, Russia, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Poland, Croatia, France, Finland, Ukraine, Sweden, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belgium to name a few.
Visuals by VJ Sellek & Hanks
www.myspace.com/mufflermusic
Bad loop
Bad loop is a Finnish electronic artist whose music, characterized by ethereal soundscapes and melodies, rough and somewhat complex rhythms with some DSP wizardry, gained popularity among Down tempo / IDM fans after releasing Lumme EP on Kahvi Collective in 2002. Later in 2005 he released the melody-ridden mini album titled Luo, which was dubbed as "Delicious in a way the '80s could never be" by Igloo mag. Since then he has been performing in clubs and festivals from UK to Russia and tweaking more music for forthcoming releases in his home studio.
Bad loop will be performing with Jari Saukkonen of Coral Visuals, who has developed a graphics engine for presenting impressive visuals during live music performances. In contrast to traditional VJ systems the Coral visuals engine does not rely on pre-rendered video clips but displays the effects in real-time 3D. The system also takes heavy advantage of real-time synchronization between the performers and the visuals.
www.badloop.com
www.myspace.com/badloop
Since November
Since November is Tomi Mäkilä's solo project. He has been playing in bands like The Crash and Magenta Skycode but currently he focuses on his Since November project. A demo song "Houston, Changing Manual" was released earlier from the upcoming Starwalkers debut album. The song gained airplay on radios all around the world and was on power play on national radio, YleX, for example. At Alternative Party Since November plays live for the first time in its new form.
Visuals by VJ Sellek & Hanks
xybo
In Finnish technoscene xybo is known as bit of an oddity. Started producing *core electronic music with trackers back in early 90s on Amiga and later released couple of speedcore/hardcore records on 12". Last 10+ years he has been playing on underground raves around Finland. Music taste and focus has changed mulitple time but one thing has been the same: harder edge and bit of 303. This time we will hear DJ set with sounds varying from older harder "warehouse/party" techno to acid and beyond.
Alek Száhala & Byproduct
Alek Száhala is one of the most successful Finnish hard dance producers.
He started off with trackers as early as 1993, and has since produced
numerous vinyl, CD and digital releases. His music has gained
international recogniton as well, leading him to play in events such as
Utopia (Sydney), Mayhem (Brisbane), Logic (London), Pharmacy (Melbourne)
and Koneisto (Helsinki).
Byproduct is a one-man musical act that takes its roots from computer
games and demos and combines them with the elements of contemporary
electronic music. In addition to his two albums, he has produced music
for various projects and performed live in many kinds of electronic
music, demoscene and other events, actively since 2004.
At Alternative Party, Alek Száhala and Byproduct will play a special live
set together, including many remixes of game, demo and tracker songs in
additon to their own music.
Visuals for Alek Száhala & Byproduct by VJ Sellek & Hanks.
alek.szahala.com/
www.myspace.com/alekszahala
byproduct.koshiyoka.com/
www.myspace.com/byproduct1
http://sellekhanks.com/
http://www.myspace.com/sellekhanks
Aleksi Eeben
Aleksi Eeben sits down at the command console and sends out an expedition through the known universe, backed by music from his latest 7 electronic, videogame, progressive rock, and contemporary folk inspired albums: Little Man Entered a Big Village, Space Age Cherokee, Perseverance, The Five Fish Fingers, The Four Tales, Three Times the Music and Spaceman Far Away from Home.
Quoted as "the iconoclast of online electronic music" and "an acquired taste" by the Internet Bureau, and "a child prodigy" by early 90's Amiga sceners, Aleksi just comments "Well, what would they know about anything anyway."
Aleksi's music has accumulated at least a dozen downloads and he has even sold two or three electronic copies in countries like U.S.A. and Japan. Aleksi is an inexperienced performer and is thrilled about the Alternative Party gig: "To be perfectly honest, the computer is playing all the music. I'm in the astronaut role. If it gets boring, I'll play Tetris."
bit.ly/aeeben
www.facebook.com/aeeben
Dave Griffiths
Dave was raised on an early education in weaving, bell ringing and 8bit
computers, and performs improvised livecoded techno music using text,
visual programming and hand made game engines. Livecoding is where you
program a computer, starting with a blank screen, in front of an
audience. The screen is projected, and you can see when the
performer/programmer messes up, and they try to make out that the sudden
silence or ear shattering white noise was actually on purpose.
Dave has performed around Europe solo, and alongside Alex McLean and
Adrian Ward as "slub". They have performed at Sonar Barcelona, STRP
Eindhoven, Secret Garden Party UK, and plenty of warehouses, run down
pubs and run down media art galleries in London, UK.
www.pawfal.org/dave
www.slub.org
www.toplap.org
De Rerum Natura
Singularity is near. All will become one.
According to many scientists and philosophers, the human brain will be enhanced with computer technology in the future decades and our intelligence will rise to unknown heights. What will the music of that formidable future sound like? De Rerum Natura might be the answer.
It is a composition by Tuomas Palonen, performed by a new, yet-unnammed 11-member orchestra from Helsinki mixing medieval chant, baroque strings, chill-out jazz and modern rock into a complex, multilayered web of sounds that only the future brain may hear as one.
In line with this year's Alternative Party theme, space, the medieval chant deals with the cosmos, planets and extraterrestrial life as written down by the 1st century BC. Roman poet Lucretius.
DJs Osyn & Aegis
Speed Meetup with DJ Osyn / Speed Dating with DJ Aegis
DJ Osyn plays entertaining Italo disco to spice up the Meetup.
To create the right mood for Speed Dating, DJ Aegis plays profound techno and house music.
VJ Sellek & Hanks
Visuals for Muffler, Since November and Alek Száhala & Byproduct by VJ Sellek & Hanks.
