The Music&Media conference in Tampere is one of the oldest music conferences in Europe, going strong for more than 20 years. Tampere is an industry city with a good music scene. Combine music and industry and you have it: Musiiki&Media seminars at daytime, Lost In Music festival at night. Incubate’s booker Peter Meeuwsen is in Tampere and writes some words about the events taking place.

It’s my first time in Finland and i get a very warm welcome from both the people here and the weather. The colors in this time of the year in Finland are overwhelming, especially yesterday as the sun was shining all day. After waking up early to catch my flight to Helsinki i was getting very hungry, so i was happy that the festival started with a reception of the Finnish Music Export where i had the chance to eat the local specialty mustamakkara (blood sausage).

The reception was taking place outside of town in a place called Akun Tehdas (Aku’s Factory), founded by Aku Syrjä, drummer of legendary finnish band Eppu Normaali. It is a building where 15 music-related companies are based under one roof. As a band you can walk in the building on one side and walk out on the other side and have your album recorded, mixed, mastered, promoted and shot a video.

At this place we got a presentation of someone working there as a sound engineer telling us a very unclear story about loudness wars. After 2 minutes he already lost the loudness war from the audience, that was desperate to bring all their networking tricks into practice. I myself got introduced to Sami of Fonal Records, one of the best labels in Europe. He’s releasing bands like Paavoharju, Kemialliset Ystävät, Islaja, Circle and Shogun Kunitoki. Unfortunately none of these bands are playing this years Lost In Music festival, but there will be a Fonal party tonight where i like to go.

I know it’s a bit sad to go watch a wellknown American band if you’re in Finland to see new Finnish bands, but I never saw The Melvins before and the other venue where the interesting Finnish bands were playing was not in walking distance. So i made the choice to go to see The Melvins in a place called Klubi. The club with a capacity of about 600 – 800 has its stage in the corner. In a room that is a square that is not a strange decision.

The Melvins get on stage with some introduction music that seems very loud, but you only get to understand what LOUD is when they start playing. It’s clear from the start that they are an amazing live band. If they weren’t looking at each other all the time, you would say that the two drummers find each other blindly. You tend to dismiss the simultaneous drumming as a show off of musicianship, but by adding something more playful like that to their very brutal show they keep your attention.

Next stop is a bar in a basement called Doris, three blocks away from Klubi. How to make an impression as a Finnish band after people just saw The Melvins open the evening? After watching two generic indie acts only The New Tigers, a shoegaze band from Turku, manage to do that. In the first song they remind me a lot of I Was A King from Norway, a band that also combines the lo-fi pop of Elf Power and Flaming Lips with a shoegaze sound. It’s a sound I love, but it’s good that they have more than that. There’s two singers in The New Tigers, both a bit off-key at times, but that doesn’t hurt their music. The New Tigers is not a revelation, but it’s definitely a band worth to check out if you’re into lo-fi and shoegaze.