((info))((tapes))
I mentioned earlier that I’m heading to Scandinavia at the end of the month, so I’m trying to cram my cranium with as much Swedish and Finnish music as I can in preparation. I can reel off a bunch of Swedish bands without thinking (Hives, ABBA, Club 8, Nicolai Dunger, Moonbabies, Soundtrack Of Our Lives) but until recently I was hard-pressed to name a Finnish band, besides maybe Hanoi Rocks. I mean, it’s mostly death metal, right?
Thankfully, there is the excellent One Chord to Another, a vast repository of Finnish indie pop, and it was there that I discovered Tapes.
The alter ego of Jukka Salminen, who also contributes vocals and keyboards to Tigerbombs and Laurila (which rose from the ashes of Office Building), Tapes just released his self-titled debut album on the small Finnish label Aisti Records.
Chock full of intimate guitar work and autoscopic lyrics, listening to Tapes gives you the feeling that Jukka is so close he could be sitting in your lap strumming while his double is across the room watching. Okay, maybe it’s not that creepy, but this is some of the same heartbreakingly beautiful stuff you might find on a Nick Drake or Elliott Smith album.
- Listen to Outside From The Box.
- Listen to I Was A Teenage Satan Worshipper’s remix of Eightythree.
You can purchase Tapes from Stupido Records in Finland (enter Tapes in search field/prices in Euros).
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That site, OneChord.net, is pretty awesome. A wealth of information about Finnish pop. And those Tapes songs make for some pretty satisfying first listens. Though the English is perfect, you can hear that it’s a second language by those front-of-the-mouth pronounciations. I likey.
The only Finnish band I could think of before your post was the Leningrad Cowboys, and I had to look them up to be sure. Speaking of Finland, have you ever seen The Man Without a Past? It’s a very dry Finnish comedy, which may be redundant, but I guess you’ll find out. At least half of the movie had gone by before I realized it was a comedy. It’s that dry.
[…] Earlier this year I paid a visit to Finland and returned with some great new finnoscandian music like Boomhauer, Lodger Hi-Fi, Aksu, and Tapes. But I neglected one of the truly great indie Finnish bands 22-Pistepirkko. […]