Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Swaeg: Sounds From Tampere Underground




Swaeg is an audiovisual collective working on non-profit basis and organising clubs here in Tampere, and at their parties you can hear some of most twisted brands of underground electronic dance music from IDM/electronic listening music to break-noise-death-whatever-core (à la the notorious British freak label V/VM) to dubstep; the Swaeggers themselves describing their sound as "idm - waltz - breakcore - medley - mash up - mortar rave - worst case scenario - neurodrunk".

Mostly headed by Joonas Toivonen (b. 1981), who also creates his own hilariously demented music under the moniker Toiminto ("Function"), Swaeg has organised over 40 parties (where yours truly has also DJed a couple of times) and a few festivals (among all Australia's Casionova and Lappland's old-school computer game sound monsters Desert Planet have been heard in these) since June 2004; also promoting visual art in the form of flyers, posters and videos -- summer 2006 saw an exhibition of Swaeg art at Tampere's Huoltamo mini-gallery.

Alongside these activities, the Swaeg posse is responsible for some Net-only music releases, including SWG001 (an MP3 compilation of Finnish electronic music, featuring such artists as Blamstrain, Roger That Jr, Oreia, Videovalvontaa, Toiminto, etc.), Demonic 1's "Die!" EP (dubstep from Tampere, SWG002), Waisted Flanders' "Lost" EP ("bass-boosted lo-fi whatstep", SWG003), and "Esoteris" EP by P2 ("psy-idm-arcade-jazz-darkambient-breakcore", SWG004). Joonas Toivonen has also promised his own dubstepish longplay should be out under Swaeg soon.

See, hear, download:

Swaeg: official site
Swaeg @ MySpace
Toiminto @ MySpace

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