| 23.10.2002 - We have just released our out-of-print debut from 1997 as MP3s. Check out the downloads-section. Earlier this year, Kristjan Eldjarn, who was a part of the making of this album died. [A moment of silence]. 21.10.2002 - Giant Robot's Superweekend was featured on the soundtrack of a documentary about vericose veins on YLE TV2. 8.10.2002 - Been a long time... Late-breaking news of the moment: Rakel Liekki strips to Giant Robot If Rakel sees this, Giant Robot curtsies gratefully and thanks her for bestowing this honor upon us. 19.8.2002 - The other a guy whose name I have managed to forget (yes, I was drunk at the time) told me at a recent Don Johnson Big Band show at Bundolo that our shows in Turku this summer "rocked harder than David Coverdale but not quite as hard as Ronnie James Dio". I hope Adam Greenfield reads this entry... Some Koneisto shots from Ahto Kulvet from Tallinn: The site is here Playing a benefit show at Tavastia on the 27th. Other acts include Kapteeni Ä-ni, Ceebrolistics and Matala. The money goes to the Finnish Red Cross and their local activities. 31.7.2002 - In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that I had a great time at Koneisto on Friday, as a member of the audience. Op:l Bastards was awesome, as was The Skillsters. The katastro.fi visuals at the Sleazenation Arena were very cool, as was hanging out at the couch... Link of the week: MIDI jacket the video is especially "cool". Run for the muthafuckin' hills, homeboy. 30.7.2002 - Today we speak of Koneisto... We were there in year 1 and it was a trying place to play. Heres a quote from that year: 8.8.2000 Koneisto... over and done with. It was a very nice festrival to see music. Pretty awful to play at, though. On account of opening year jitters, no doubt. Kupittaa Park is a wonderful venue for an event of this sort and they really had the weather on their side. If they manage to work out all the logistic glitches in the years to come, it will be a classic. We skipped year 2 for numerous reasons. We came on board for year 3, this year. In all honesty, as an artist, I must say that a lot of the probelms that made the first one so unpleasant are still in evidence today. Too many stages, too many performers, not enough attention to detail and THE BASICS...lots of nice little touches, though, usually of secondary importance. Like birch leaves in some of the bathrooms. Fake palm trees and a kiddie pool with a thyroid problem at the stage we played at. All of two songs before the PA got fucked. If you want to read about it (in Finnish), go here. Next year maybe less palm trees and more good sound equipment? No classic. So, some questions from a band to a festival: Why so much of everything? Why not focus? Why not concentrate on the people, the ones who play and the ones who come to see the ones who play? At the end of the day, it's still the bands and djs that people come to see, not a see-thru dance floor or branches in the shit can... That's our 2 cents. For more extensive commentary or a chat, please contact us. 4.7.2002 - Here's a nice little link: bad bands. It's an attempt at maintaining a comprehensive list of useless, shit bands. We are honored to be on this list. A correction re: the way our name is written has already been sent. Otherwise, taking it easy, band-wise, what with one member in China for a month and all. There will be some Robot action this coming weekend in Tampere, at Telakka. 26.6.2002 - Us folks here at Camp Robot have been following the trials and tribulations of R. Kelly for a while. In fact, as far back as wondering how come no one took umbrage to his doings with Aaliyha (RIP) back when she was a wee one. Anyway, it looks like the jig is up and Kelly is going down. Not with grace, either. There is something decidedly michaeljacksonish about his conduct, as witnessed here: click Geez, I guess everyone just misunderstands the poor guy... Another interesting link for our vouyeristic, social pornography addicted readership: click Way to go. Hope you have had the opportunity to catch Hosni's antics on MoonTV. By now, it must be clear to everyone that "Turku has no METRO...or ratikka". 11.6.2002 - Turku was great. Two shows, both of which were quite enjoyable. The local paper liked us, too: article in Finnish We had Hosni Boudaly with us last weekend. It was a blast, especially when he would sing "Ilma on Kaunis" for hours on end. .. ..Seriously, though, Hosni did a lot for our sometimes withdrawn stage presence. Helped us cope with the time limitations inherent in festival sets. We'll see if we can't entice him to join us at Provinssi. 3.6.2002 - Giant Robot added to the music library at KCRW in LA. In what may have served as the official opening for the Giant Robot festival summer (in all its meager glory), we played the Nokia MakeItFestival on Saturday. A strange day to be having a celebration during the day, as most people were bogged down at family gatherings celebrating all the fresh graduates from the various levels of the educational grist mill... So, the turn-out was on the anemic side, considering the media presence (paid) of the event in question. We got to hang out in a a very 80s caravan, so that was fine. We also tested out our truncated festival set. It worked. So, DBTL, here we come. The new single is almost ready to hit the stores. The song in question is Heartbreakdance. The single has two remixes of the song. One by The Skillsters from Tampere. They turned the song into a full-blown, in your face, fist-pumping, beer-drinking party tune. Jonny Bro's take is a little closer to the original and elaborates on the songs r'n'b roots. The fourth song on the single is a live version of Real Simple, recorded at Studio B, a program on Radiomafia. 24.5.2002 - A heartfelt thank you to the organizers and the audience at Lutakko in Jyväskylä. That was the most fun we've had playing in quite a while. Giant Robot can't wait to pay another visit to this hallowed hall. Everything worked and we felt very welcome. Thanks. Here's some photos taken by an audience member: http://opix.jaiko.fi/~jopa/Mystar/giant.htm The show at Club Bundolo on the 31st of this month has been cancelled. We will try to reschedule for August. In robot appearances, Tuomas will be a part of the Pixel Ache Festival this weekend. The festival includes and audio-visual intervention at Club Bundolo on both nights of the weekend. On the 29th of may, Arttu will be hosting a two.hour show dealing with 90's music on RadioAsema at 103,1 MHz. 10.5.2002 - First, there's a new mp3 in the downloads section. It's an experiment we did live at Gloria with a more acoustic-oriented set up. Kind of a more portable and compact version of Giant Robot. The sound is what it is, but bear with it. Me and Tuomas were, true to the dictates of any celebrity obsessed culture, interviewed for TV on the question of Ang San Suu Kyi's release from house arrest. The segment came off ok, but they didn't really include the most relevant and important comments that had to do with the nature of the current situation. The stuff i would have liked to have seen in the segment was the part about how this isn't the end of anything. The temptation to write the Burmese situation off as a major victory for Amnesty and the various cultural glitterati that had the stamina to attend the numerous gala events held to draw attention to the house arrest looms large. The truth is that now, more than ever, the international community needs to pay attention. The release is of no use whatsoever if it's just trading her prison for a larger, more gilded version of same. The release is for naught if the opposition is not allowed room to maneuver. So, keep taking your tux to the cleaners and keep sitting through those gala dinners, you famous cultural icon. There's still a lot to do. And PS. the Rem Koolhaas suggestion for a new EU flag sucks eggs. It's not even a flag, more like a logo and as a logo it sucks. It doesn't work at all in B&W, it is migraine inducing and all it really says is Pixel Stretch. I just hope that it's some elementary first draft, saying: So, where do we go from here? http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_583273.html?menu=news.latestheadlines 29.4.2002 - Two beautiful extended moments in time: In a car on a deserted highway between Porvoo and Helsinki, 3 am, with Ol' Dirty Bastard's first solo album on the evil sounding Oldsmobile factory standard sound system. Magic. That was Wednesday/Thursday. Present: Tuomas, Arttu & Aleksi. Three guys called Azymuth making a beautiful racket unto the heavens in a Helsinki basement club (http://www.bundolo.info), all night. Said noise continued in the basement of the basement; sauna and percussion. Present: an oodle of folks, all thunderstruck. Addendum: we had an extremely nice time in Porvoo. The food was, as usual, excellent, despite the presence of low-fat coconut milk (who thought of this abomination?), the sauna was a lifesaver, we had a nice little chat with a local journalist, played for over two hours, partially stuff we'd never really played together (Sunflower the metasong) with this outfit, hung out later...thanks to DJ Birger :) 24.4.2002 - Off to Porvoo tonight for some good food, good sauna and good music. Information re: Riga Project: check out footage from the RIXC international architecture workshop. mostly latvian, but presentation videos in english. features also mysterious Giant Robot allience ambassador shohei shigematsu http://rixc.lv/architecture 22.4.2002 - The shows in Turku and Tampere about a week and a half ago were both great. The band is really "in the pocket", so to speak, and we play 1:45 to 2:00 hour shows. And this is at the audience's request, mind you...Most of them are on tape, so mp3s may be forthcoming. A few more club gigs and then it's off to festivaaaal. Tuomas is currently in Italy, talking for money. The Robot web editor is till waiting for links to info about his Riga project. 11.4.2002 - The show at Tavastia on 29.3. was a blast. Some of the new songs are coming along better as live versions than others, we still start a little slow...whatever. Look forward to more of the same, plus some changes to the set list in Turku and Tampere this weekend. The album was reviewed in Sue, a local, occasionally attitude-laden 'zine. It was interesting. Reviewer took particular pains to excoriate the previous album. One of the fairly knee-jerk reactions we occasionally get, accusing us of being trendoids, whatever the definition of the day happens to be for this highly malleable term. They did like the new album, though. Hufvudstadsbladet, on the other hand, used a chunk of their review to expound on the superiority of the first album. Speaking of trends, I am thinking of starting a betting pool to see how many times garage rock comes back during my life time as a music consumer. The last time, before this current crop of heartfelt guitar gougers with diseased names, was in the 80's with Hoodoo Gurus, et al. Time for next time around in approximately 15 years? Maybe 10? Long live rock'n'roll and all that stuff. Denim jackets with patches, wallets on the ends of chains, just a-clinketing through the dark hallways leading into murky bathrooms in a plethora of small basement clubs, taking a leak, obsessing about the heartfelt realness of it all and lack thereof in the outside world. PÁP Magazine was released in Helsinki and Milano right about now. Yours truly did a bunch of writing for it. If you see it, fork out the exorbitant price...do it for me...please...Even has an article about Giant Robot. See you in Turku... 27.3.2002 - The Tavastia show is coming up fast, in two days and we are busy taking apart every song on the album. Here are some reviews the album has generated: Findance
- a one man operation that specializes in dance music. The reviews are in Finnish, FYI. Translations may be forthcoming, especially for the one by Pekka:). Laudatory, to say the least. 20.3.2002 - We played at a TV-show called Yokotai last night. Interesting stuff. If someone were to start selling talk show bootlegs, the un-cut version of what goes on on the set, I might have to buy a set. It is like TV on steroids and it makes no sense. We totally rearranged Real Simple five minutes before we were meant to start taping. A very good version. I doubt the people at the show realized how the seat-of-the-pants the affair was... One thing is clear after watching the tape: we will have a very hard time getting the teenage demographic ensnared into our product maelstrom. In the words of Mikko Tukiainen, we looked like men... meaning, what, I do not know...:) I know we ain't "purty"... It probably means we are hard to market. Other guests: a couple who are into geocaching, a grown-up easter egg /treasure hunt using GPS. A guy from Riedel Crystal. He put on a very convincing show. Unfortunately, the part where he holds up a traditional cognac glass and declares it the enemy of cognac was cut. I was totally sold. Especially the part about (to paraphrase) "This glass was designed by Wirkkala or Häberli, but our glasses were designed by cabernet sauvignon and merlot." Nice. Talk about genetic screening. You can go to any discussion group on the Internet and get yourself a heap of trouble. Finnish stand-up comedians. Performance art for your living room. That was it. A big thanks to everyone who showed up for the party at Bar Alahuone. Recent media appearances: Pekka Laine of Hypnomen-fame gave us a great review in Soundi and Petri Silas wrote an article. Rumba gave us the cover and a spread. They really went to town on Okko's photo. Looks good. The interview was all me due to a sudden illness in the band and peopel being spread out in cities and studios(...Stockholm/Copenhagen for Aleksi, Barcelona for Kim, the busily teeming metropolis of Tampere for Petro). Conversation ranged freely from the generic to the specific, band-related to personal. It was enjoyable. More like a chat then one of those "So, do how's it feel to have the album finished?" interviews that always make you want to take a page out of Answering Sportscasters' Questions for Dummies. A good light read...explains why the deep semiotic currents flowing deep beneath the placidly vapid surface of Urheiluruutu and ESPN. Or not. Tuomas did interesting stuff in Riga recently. Pages coming soon. Look for them on the front page. Links: 17.3.2002 - The Giant Robot diary is back. What's up so far? The pages have gone through a light renewal. Our first single has breached the Finnish top 10. The album is out and available in stores. A bunch of waste products have been uploaded to this site. Peruse at your leisure. You'll find that shit in the detritus-section. What's the future hold? We will be playing some shows, appearing on TV, doing all the other stuff musicians do to flog their wares upon the unsuspecting public, out to innocently accessorize their urban nomad lifestylez. We will be redoing the downloads-section, so by the end of next week, the mp3s you have grown to depend upon will no longer be available. There'll be new ones. Or not. It's all up in the air. And, of course, we will be running commentary on all things everywhere all the time, right here. |
