If you were to ask me the last place on earth you’d find me willingly 10 years ago, it might very well have been at a rave. However, time changes many things, including musical tastes, and with a growing appreciation for EDM and trance music, it occurred to me that I’m not very familiar with the music scene in Helsinki, outside of your standard metal, rock, and pop. As such, one of my personal goals this year was to spread out, try new things, and see what else Finland has to offer musically. One of these stops was at Tritium Show, hosted by Apollo Productions, which is a 21:00-5:00 rave held Ravintola Kiltakellari every third Saturday of the month. On this occasion, we happened to have stepped into something a tad more solemn than normal.
Somnus bene mi amice translates to “sleep well, my friend,” and was named in dedication to Pasi Pietikäinen, who was one of the founding members of Apollo Productions, who very tragically passed away last year. As such, there was a bit of a somberness to this otherwise upbeat and fun event, with one fellow outside giving us a short, sad, but glowing story of what a wonderful person Pasi was and how deeply missed he has been. At 2:00 a.m., a moment of silence was dedicated in his memory.
We arrived to a very relaxed venue with the organizers and DJs milling about, casually getting things ready, and everyone was pleasantly friendly and helpful – not always the case at your average grim and dark metal show. A shiny unicorn hat adorned the first artist, Kepposmetsä, who played what seemed to be ideal warm-up music, though it seems we newbs were the odd ones out, having been among the only owns to have shown up to the start of the party. We enjoyed the danceable set and were glad to see people trickling in as the deck changed over for JayJay‘s more pop/techno-oriented set. As I have understood, this artist has changed his name to Jay Crystal and makes more trance-oriented music under that name, but revived his house DJ style specifically for this show.
Kiltakellari boasted two rooms, with the main stage having a really beautiful hexagram light with additional spotlights that made for a really nice atmosphere, while the smaller “Hug Room” had more ambient lighting and more variety in set lengths. There is a mystical green-lit stone passageway between the rooms and if the sound was crossing over, the door could be closed to preserve sound balance. One of the other cool things to see was that most of the DJs would come out 5-10 minutes before their set started to get ready, meaning that the stage changeover was already complete more or less by the time the first DJ had stopped and the second took over. It wasn’t a seamless crossover – they did still stop the music between sets, but only long enough for some cheers, as the new DJ would start right away – a big difference from the long and arduous stage changes of metal acts!
The DJs of the night were all quite good, keeping in mind at least that I probably can’t tell if a DJ messes something up. That said, we saw some B2B sets between AJ Nuoja and someone from DoubleClap Radio (which is also run by Apollo), as well as Jayten and Inkate, as well as legendary Finnish DJ, Milla Lehto, and Siqu… and that’s only what we saw in the main room, as there was also Hilla Lilla B2B with Mikael Ranta (as well as Hilla Lilla‘s own set), and the last act in the Hug Room was Dan’J B2B with Lauri H.
However, it was the main stage headliner of the night that really appealed to us, but maybe you’ll understand why, when I explain that IMPURITY is a brand new drum ‘n’ bass act who were actually a 5-piece, with Jayten on electric drums, and a bunch of young-looking fellows on bass, and a couple guys in the back working synths, etc. This collective of five or so guys put on a very heavy electronic set that really and truly kicked ass and was the best act of the night, by and far (yes, I realize how unobjective that is when I come from a heavy metal background, but cut me some slack, these guys were really good). Even better, this was their first-ever show! So we hadn’t known what this was coming into it, but we left (sadly, halfway through their set, but it was already 4:30 in the morning at that point) feeling like we’d definitely want to see them again at the next possible opportunity!
Ultimately, we had an awesome time at the Tritium Show, making for a very long but really interesting and new experience for us that we hope to repeat in the future – perhaps we’ll be there again on the third Saturday of March, and if we are, we hope to see you as well, as this event could have used some more bodies!
Lineup
Mi Amice Stage
Kepposmetsä
JayJay
AJ Nuora B2B DoubleClap
Milla Lehto B2B Siqu
Concha
~moment of silence~
Jayten B2B Inkate
Stede
IMPURITY (live act)
Hug Room
Hug B2B
TNE
Snamu
Hilla Lilla B2B Mikael Ranta
~moment of silence~
Hilla Lilla
Dan’j B2B Lauri H
