With a line-up dominated by pop and big international names, Flow also offers a great opportunity to delve into the more alternative scenes of Finnish music and enjoy the sounds of the north, with a language that is as phonetically distinctive as it is beautiful in a musical context.
Flow opens up a space for the most unsettling forms of contemporary Finnish music: from ambient, electronic, improvisation and sound experimentation to medieval music and traditional songs. A window onto a particularly fertile local scene, where the most adventurous proposals – characterised by subtle intensities and deep listening – were carefully curated on The Other Sound stage.
AHO
The Finn Scene
What are the distinctive sounds of the far north of the world? With extreme winters of up to 40 °C below zero and almost 24 hours of daylight in summer, the land of Aki Kaurismäki and Tom of Finland features a diverse palette of artists who, for a moment, put the silence so prized by Finnish society on hold to open the doors to their own language.
Among the concerts on the local scene, AHO’s ambient set stood out; performing as a trio, they crafted ethereal soundscapes from dense layers of 1980s Juno analogue synthesisers, tuba, vocals and electronic saxophone. The timbral modulations gradually generated an enveloping soundscape, at times reminiscent of the oceanic dream pop of the Cocteau Twins – soundscapes that could easily fit into the dreamlike and mysterious world of Twin Peaks and David Lynch’s soundtracks.
Finnish jazz pianist Aki Rissanen presented his new project, Omniwerk, playing an instrument that combines two historic keyboard inventions: Leonardo da Vinci’s viola organista and the Baroque lautenwerk, built by Finnish craftsmen.
A sort of modified harpsichord, with which Rissanen alternated between passages recalling the mathematical, isochronous minimalism of Philip Glass, moments reminiscent of ambient music, and others featuring almost flamenco-like motifs played on a medieval instrument.
The Omniwerk can play its strings with a bow and pluck them simultaneously, encompassing a sonic universe ranging from the harpsichord to a string orchestra. Rissanen uses it to establish a dialogue between the melodic fragments found in da Vinci’s manuscripts and our own era, through sampling and live looping, bringing medieval sound into the realm of contemporary abstraction.
Ensemble Gamut!
The programme of early music continued with Ensemble Gamut!, a project by vocalist and composer Aino Peltomaa, which offers a fresh interpretation of medieval music using traditional instruments – a large kantele, harps, various types of flutes and electronic elements – on a lyrical and spiritual journey.
Visual artist Vappu Rossi accompanied the performance with a live painting session on stage, creating a dialogue between music and image.
Niillas Holmberg & Pauli Lyytinen presented their new album Naarattu laulu (Eclipse Music), built around Sámi poetry (from the indigenous communities of northern Finland – brrr, it’s freezing!), deconstructed saxophones and Pauli Lyytinen’s electronic sounds. In an intimate spoken-word performance, the poetry unfolds across austere and experimental instrumentation, revealing all the beauty and distinctiveness of the Sámi language, with its deep, guttural sounds.
The Juhani Aaltonen Quartet (a figurehead flutist of Finnish jazz), featuring flute, double bass, piano and drums, performed atmospheric and meditative jazz, characterised by gentle intensities and a distinctly Nordic elegance.
Finding Jens Hortling, in collaboration with producer Lauri Eloranta, got the fishing boat rocking, accompanied by a mid size orchestra, presenting a show that drew on crooner style garage rock with a British reminding a bit of Tindersticks, closing the set with an orchestral arrangement of Suicide’s Dream Baby Dream.
Hey baby, take a walk on the pop side…
Alongside the more experimental sounds, Flow also showcased some past and present classics of Finnish popular music. Olavi Uusivirta and Arppa represented a new generation of Finnish pop music, whilst the legendary J. Karjalainen embodies much of the popular imagery of the Finnish songbook from the 1980s until today.
Finn and beyond
Beyond the various local scenes, Flow also set aside a space for world music.
Featuring artists such as the legendary Brazilian Arthur Verocai, a key figure in Brazilian music of the 1960s and 1970s, who forged his own unique style blending psychedelia, funk and orchestral music, working alongside artists such as Elis Regina and Gal Costa.
At Flow, he performed accompanied by the local AUKSO Orquestra, unleashing the full power of the orchestral sound – a big band that skilfully moved between funk, samba and Brazilian folk music. Taking Brazilian funk into contemporary territory, the young singer-songwriter Ana Frango Elétrico – one of the most interesting voices in contemporary Brazilian music – blended the tradition of Brazilian popular song with a more experimental and open-minded sensibility.
The Zawose Queens
Straight from Tanzania, the duo The Zawose Queens brought traditional Gogo music to the festival, using African folk instruments, marimbas and masive amplified kalimbas, accompanied by electric guitar and drums. A celebration of dance and joy which, at times, flirted with desert blues and more electric sounds, reminiscent of Group Doueh or Group Inerane, demonstrating vocal prowess and overwhelming energy on stage.
Carrying on the African musical legacy, Awesome Tapes From Africa – a project by the American music researcher Brian Shimkovitz – presented its classic DJ set, drawn from its extraordinary archive of African cassettes.
It was an immersion into a universe of rhythms, dances and melodies, ranging from the earliest Afro-synth wave to traditional and folk music from different regions of the continent.
More Ohr Less
The Other Sound and 360º Ballroom stages hosted cutting-edge acts from the international scene. The trio More Ohr Less, comprising Hans-Joachim Roedelius at 92, a key figure in the German krautrock scene of the 1960s and 1970s – Christopher James Chaplin, (son of Charles Chaplin) a sound experimenter, and composer and sound artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff, created a soundscape based on improvisation, combining samples, extended techniques on orchestral instruments – glissandos, dissonances and textures, electronics and piano. A hybrid territory that built bridges between neoclassical music, ambient and electronic experimentation.
MÚM
Múm’s Icelandic neighbours played on the packed 360 Ballroom stage, presenting a full-band set that moved away from the more recognisable electronic sounds of their albums to venture into territories closer to post-rock and dream pop. An electric cello, two guitars, keyboards, drums and vocals came together to create a more organic and physical version of their sound universe.
NAH (US-Belgium), presented a solo set featuring drums and synthesisers, in a high-intensity performance bringing to mind Lightning Bolt’s wildest days. His set reconciles the tensions between noise, ambient and dance music. Hypnotically repetitive rhythms pushed to the limit: the physicality of sound in all its splendour.
The big discovery
Tyler Ballgame was the festival’s big discovery, an artistic gem still in its early stages, and he blew the 360 Ballroom stage away with his vocal mastery, presenting his debut album, For the First Time Again. Classic American rock from the 1970s, with echoes of Steely Dan and the glam-rock exuberance of T. Rex or Bowie. A singer with a more than promising future ahead of him, with songs that go straight to the heart, and a baritone voice that would move even Margaret Thatcher. He closed his set with an epic cover of Air Supply’s even more epic ‘Without You’, featuring a polyphonic chorus and the audience raising their lighters.
Cabaret Voltaire
In Pain We Trust
Not everything in life is a party, joy and playfulness. Exploring the most complex and conflicting emotions, whilst balancing the brightness of pop, the legends of industrial post-punk, Cabaret Voltaire, took to the stage as part of their 50th-anniversary tour. With their unmistakable British flair, they put on a powerful and intense show, reinterpreting their early ’70s music from a surprisingly fresh and aggressive sound.
VHS visuals and organic electronic sounds played live, synthesised guitars and electronic drums. Representing the industrial genealogy that they themselves helped to build, in dialogue with the world of Throbbing Gristle, Clock DVA and other radical experiments of the era.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds brought the festival to a close with a set that was as intense as moving, built mainly around classics from their repertoire, and even featuring Finnish subtitles for ‘Hollywood’ – a touch that stole the hearts of the audience.
Cave, accompanied by the Bad Seeds (including a gospel choir), commanded the stage with an omnipresent physical presence and a body-to-body relationship with the audience that challenged the local sense of personal space and rarely left room for distance. His exuberance and energy contrasted with the quiet, introverted character often associated with Finnish culture, as the audience responded with their own arms and shoulders, holding Nick’s body aloft each time he ventured into the crowd – autograph signing on stage included.
With the moving Into My Arms as the festival’s closing song, Nick left us in silence until Flow 2027.
Photo credit – Riina Tolonen
