This year we gave our already traditional The Most Commendable Artist of the Year in Southwest Finland to MLK from Turku. The Most Commendable Artist of the Year outside Southwest Finland award was given to Vehje from Eastern Finland.
You can watch the award ceremony above (in Finnish).
Welcome to Taiteen talo yard to celebrate the end of summer on 19th of August. Princes of Nigeria and Rane & Co. will be playing, and the yearly Komitea prizes will be given to commendable artists both from Turku area and the rest of Finland.
More info here (in Finnish). A Facebook event is available for your immediate liking needs too.
Multimediakonsultit were the spokesmen for the office working class in the turn of the millennium. Now their fourth album is finally in the brink of being sent to mastering. The exact publish date hasn’t been decided yet, but while waiting for that the band releases the third single from the album, Kun tietokone ei toimi (“When the Computer Ain’t Working”).
The song reminisces all those melancholic moments when the loyal and beloved companion of ours – computer – hasn’t been there for us in the tides of life.
Kumikäki also celebrates the International Workers’ Day with a couple of remixes from their first album Le Bob. The sounds were recycled by DJ Jabsonik, and Rane Salo from Rane & Co. played guitar on one of the tracks.
Both of the singles are available for consumption at the usual places – Bandcamp, Spotify, YouTube, Tidal, Apple Music and the others.
Akim Color, who released a solo album last autumn, kicks off the Komitea releases this spring with his tender and atmospheric song Edje Koudji.
You can listen to the single on Bandcamp, Apple Music and Tidal, among other places. But if you buy it from Bandcamp specifically today, first of April that is, Akim will get a higher than usual slice from your payment. It is again Bandcamp Friday.
Akim’s Afro-blues rock band Zaquatic releases new material today too, in the form of a music video. It’s a chase story set in Pansio, Turku.
Before our five-year celebration gala night in the end of last October we had some warm-up clubs. Here’s a recording of Jukka Lempa’s gig at Proffan kellari on 29th of October 2021. Jukka played some sensitive, intime ballads accompanied with piano.
If you live in Turku or nearby, tune into Radio Robin Hood frequency of 91,5 MHz on Wednesdays to hear Outola, the show specialised in marginal music. In the host duo you might recognise a face familiar from Komitea connections as well.
Outola broadcasts music not heard on commercial radio stations. We also introduce local artists and outsiders from the history of popular music.
At the Outola website you can browse the tracklists of past shows and listen to the episodes of our scifi series The Martian Blog Chronicles.
Let the maelstrom of crancy sounds suck you into its depths!
… wishes Trio Anuri by their new single Pätkätöitä (“Temp Jobs”), which is their regressive rock cover of the country blues standard Railroad Worksong.
Get the track from your favorite digital music site – for example:
Coming to others as well later.
In the cover photo you can see the band on a temp job gig at Kirjastosilta, Turku.
(Photo by Ronja Kortelainen)
Rarely has waiting for Christmas glowed such warmth as on Pukki palaa music video by Kivireki. The song serves some foretaste from the band’s upcoming first full-length album, which is currently in the mixing phase.
You can watch the video above, on our YouTube channel…
… or just listen to the song on the major digital music services:
By the Christmas Eve the single will be available on the others as well.
Ho.
Our five year celebration has finally been celebrated. Last Saturday at the Utopia Club in Turku the audience was warmed up by the masters of ceremony Maria Pettersson, Toivo Haimi, and our association’s own stars Rane & Co, Kupittaa, Princes of Nigeria and Lawrence. After them it was time to hand over The Most Commendable Artist of the Year in Southwest Finland and The Most Commendable Artist of the Year outside Southwest Finland awards.
The former was given to Lauri “Lawrence” Ståhlberg, who was completely flabbergasted by the attention.
In the justification the award sub-committee noted, among other things: “Lawrence is a confident wordsmith and lyricist. We also appreciate his self-ironic approach – which is a very typical way of seeing things here in Southwest Finland. That and the sense for absurdity ties Lauri’s modern lyrics to the long underground culture tradition in the Turku area.”
The Most Commendable Artist of the Year outside Southwest Finland award was given to Maria Mattila, known as the guitarist and the singer-songwriter of Mara Balls. Maria wasn’t able to attend the occasion herself, so her representative, Mara Balls dancer Emma Majava received it instead.
The award sub-committee explained their choice with these words: “Komitea appreciates both Maria’s proudness in walking her own path as an artist, her ambition and her boldness to bring up mental health issues to the public discussion by her own example. In addition to that, Maria is a wide-ranging grassroots culture activist in Tampere – a bit like Komitea in Turku. We feel deep soul connection to Maria, and therefore we are proud to award her.”
The sweaty, thumpy and noisy gig by Ronskibiitti ended the night. (As a deception, Kupittaa is depicted in the photo above.)
Ended, schmended… some of us got stuck at the Utopia backstage until wee hours.
That’s all, folks.
PS: The Komitea compilation still hasn’t arrived to neither Spotify nor Apple Music. We’re in the process of figuring out, what the hell happened in the publication. You’ll find the album on several other digital music platforms, though, and of course you can buy it as a cd too. We hope that we’ll be able to get the compilation to all the digital channels by the end of the week.
The post-capitalistic labour music band from early 00s, Multimediakonsultit releases the second single Vaaleanpunainen kauluspaita (“The Pink Collared Shirt”) from their still upcoming fourth full-length album.
The song represents the ironic office rock style that made the band famous in the noughties. For some reason, the tune was never published back in the day, but was forgotten for almost twenty years in the deepest corners of some dusty old USB stick. The version released today was recorded in several sessions around Turku during 2019–2021.
Office rats of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but the colour of your collared shirt.
