The darkening autumn night on Saturday, November 2nd, 2024, saw an interesting double feature lined up at Korjaamo‘s Kulmasali stage, as DRAGSVIK and MODEM took the stage to promote their new split-EP, “Miten täällä voi elää?,” officially out on Friday, November 8th. The two bands might seem like an unlikely match for a split record at first, with the post-punk despair of DRAGSVIK landing a few steps from the dark synth vibes of MODEM, but as it turned out, DRAGSVIK have done some electronic remixes of their songs, and hearing them the split record all falls to its place.
During their opening slot at Korjaamo, DRAGSVIK played only one of the two electric versions of their songs, namely “Parasiitit.” The other song on the split-EP, “Luokkasota” was heard as well, but in its original rock band form. The show started at an already quite full venue that quickly filled up during the first song or two. DRAGSVIK did what you can expect: fiercely political, angry, and uncompromising. The gloomy post-punk sounds so well to suit the band’s messages of stark contrast and injustice.
The band’s performance was reminiscent of their music: serious, angry, and alienated. There wasn’t much audience contact, but of course, you wouldn’t expect fun stories and jokes between angry and serious songs. Now, once in a while, a thought might have slipped into the listeners’ mind, if it’s all maybe just a bit too black-and-white in DRAGSVIK’s music, but then they found a way to convince the audience again. We have to admit one thing: DRAGSVIK feel like they mean what they say, and do with force.
MODEM, on the other hand, had written two new songs for the split-record, “Ei puhuta enää” and “Lasku.” The first one is about a lost connection between friends and life values drifting apart, the second one is about the price of housing and the accumulation of wealth. So MODEM is political as well, but the contrasts in their world seem a little less stark than the ones DRAGSVIK paints. Their approach musically is somewhat lighter as well. The beats and synths take one back to sounds of ’80s synth pop, there’s some PET SHOP BOYS here and a touch of DEPECHE MODE there. The vocal style is almost close to some older Finnish pop music in the iskelmä-genre.
Live on stage the focus was highly on Tytti Roto, the vocalist, doing her semi-acrobatic dance routines, while Ville Valavuo, managing most of the synths and beats, stood as an almost gestureless statue on stage – except when he picked up a V-shaped Gibson guitar during few of the songs. In addition, some of the songs featured a three-piece backing vocal choir bringing new depth to the band’s sound. All-in-all, MODEM is an interesting combination that seems like a retro-trip at first but reveals some interesting musical ideas and in-time hooks in the lyrics.
In the end, it was a good performance from two of the more interesting names in the Finnish underground music scene. Check our photo gallery here…
Dragsvik
MODEM
Photos by Arto Alho
