Text: Mikko A
MELUN MAA – LAND OF NOISE is a documentary focusing on currently active new Finnish noise. During late 2023 to early 2024 director Olli Tanskanen traveled across Finland to meet the artists and talk with them. Fast paced one hour documentary covers variety of newer artists. Finnish noise may have had notoriety for its darker and bizarre side, yet this perception has been always slightly inaccurate. That has been one of the elements, while there are other ways to look at artists who can be filed under broad umbrella term of “noise”.
In recent years, compilation series such as Kolari (5 CD‘s with 20 artists in total) and Terässinfonia (soon coming 7th CD with c. 60 artists in total) have underlined the growing magnitude of Finnish noise. Country with merely 5 million inhabitants, is about half of the population of Berlin or New York. Yet, unusually large number of harsh noise and power electronics artists have existed. More remarkably, so many old and new ones are active right now. Despite decades of activities, there is growing vivid noise underground that keeps feeding energy into itself and spreading into new cities and new forms of expression.
Special Interests #15 had massive report of Finnish noise scene, in form of page after page of reviews. Almost 50 releases, from almost equal number of artists, that came out during 2020 was reviewed/introduced. There wasn’t even goal to cover “everything” that came that year. Scope was tightly in material that is generally covered in Special Interests magazine: The real noise and power electronics, with releases that could be noteworthy even for international audience. Many releases without doubt, at the very top of international expression, which is proven my vast amount of releases being published by international labels. Article excluded the releases from playful experimental sound scene, electro-acoustic, ambient, ritual music and all that. Issue is still available and can be good source for information for anyone looking more Finnish noise.
Finland has multiple noise magazines, labels, internationally active distributors, frequent gigs, small festivals and even noise podcasts in Finnish language. Not to mention also Finland based Special Interests forum has been notable melting pot for discussion and promotion of all things noisy. One of last places outside the mega-corporation controlled social media and commercial www platforms.
Due the wide variety of different types of people and tastes, scene can be sometimes almost abstract. Many may not feel they belong very tightly in it, yet people still operate within roughly same milieu. From very early days, there has been variety of sounds and aesthetics. It is hard to fully explain what is “Finnish sound” or “Finnish approach” for noise or power electronics, if there even is one. Many insists there is no uniformity. It is true to some extent. It may be very hard to put it on words that would apply to everybody. That may misunderstanding, since none of the moments in noise & pe history has been about one uniform approach. Nevertheless, as a whole, when looking the bigger picture, you tend to see characteristics, some sort of aura, how something differs from many other countries or moments in history.
Melun Maa – Land of Noise documentary consists only fraction of currently new active artists. Before documentary was being made, I was pondering how could one do it properly. Including too many people would lead into result where everybody has too little screen time. You would not necessarily know enough of their work, just see obscure names and faces appear one after another. Focusing on too narrow range of artists would tell more about those particular artists than about the scene or expression in general. There is also significant challenge of wether you are doing documentary for “whoever” or for the “die-hard noise fanatics”. Do you assume people know about noise in general and proceed into details or dive into specifics without building foundations. Perhaps one solution could have been like they did with “I dream of wires” documentary. The hour and half regular version would be enough for most regular viewers. The fanatics may want to see the hardcore edition with added 2,5h of material, making it 4 hours long modular gear porn marathon.
Olli Tanskanen may not be yet hugely well known internationally, but his presence in Finnish scene is notable. Special Interests made short documentary of his Edge Of Decay project that can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC7dz8Zp-4M
Knowing how consuming task is to commit into making documentaries that involve multiple artists, SI decided to ask Tanskanen some questions.
Olli Tanskanen: I got the idea for the Finnish noise documentary some years ago. As ”a member” of the Finnish noise scene for many years as a artist (Edge of Decay, Vigilantism, etc.) and event organizer (Romun Huuto, Melun Kiukaat, etc.), I have had great opportunity to see this new rise of Finnish noise artists and labels.
Not that there has not been great artists and labels before but you can definitely see new noise boom or hype in Finland. It of course leans bit more on the Harsh Noise side with lot of great new names in Finland.
For the artists I had good opportunity to choose many people that are my friends or I know through my artist and event activities. Scene and Finland as a country is so small so it has been pretty easy to have a contact to artists, labels and ”noise fans”.
I wanted to show great variety of Finnish noise scene which is active on the present day. The document focus was more on the newer names which have started in lets say last 15 years or so.
I did not want to copy the ”one and only” Finnish noise documentary ”Romua, ruisketta, rutinaa” from 2011. It has all the classics names from Bizarre Uproar, Grunt to Umpio and more. That is why I chose to focus on more recent acts and the new rise of Finnish noise.
”Land of Noise” has quite wide range of Finnish noise talent from nasty Power Electronics and Industrial sounds by Augmented Atrocity to nature themed Noise and Ambient by Näsiä. Finnish scene has so much to offer these days.
We live in time of abundance of podcasts, where interviews can be couple hours of random talk. Relaxed atmosphere or guys talking seemingly about whatever may work when you have time. When you want to compress documentation into something specific, it is vastly different format. The focus and the ability to direct is challenging. You are not just bouncing off ideas. Even if you were, the task of going through countless of hours of raw material to pick up couple minutes of something that serves the documentary as a whole is consuming work compared to just uploading the whole thing, largely unedited.
Olli Tanskanen: I have always loved movies, documentaries and all. For podcast side there is so much great people already doing it, even in Finland we have now at least two good podcast covering noise and experimental music (Noisecast, Brownhill Podcast). I have worked with video stuff more than ”spoken audio” like podcasts, so video document was pretty easy choice.
Noise is so abstract and more or less improvisation based. I think you need some visual aspect to show new people what is about it. It helps to create bigger impact. Noise is bit hard to put in words. If you show some guy banging metal junk with mic connected to amplifiers, it might tell bit more than just playing five minutes of pure Harsh Noise chaos.
As they say ”A picture is worth a thousand words”
Making ”Land of Noise” was a new challenge for me because I really haven’t done any documentary work before. I have done some music videos, visuals and other ”short work” but not really a documentary or video interviews.
I really wanted to see if I can do it. I didn’t have any big budget or great equipment for it. Just a basic videocamera, usb mic and laptop.
I travelled around Finland all that in my backback. I don’t even have a car, so I had to take bus or train to places and events. So it is done in very d.i.y. mentality. But as for me I think youtube documentary doesn’t need always be some HBO or Vice budget thing with 4K cameras and big group behind it.
I think I have the same mentality in most of my work. Meaning events or noise records. If you want something to be done, better to do it yourself.
Noise is raw, so I think the documentary can be little bit like that too.
The questions were the same to everybody. Because I haven’t done any documentaries before I thought that was the easiest way to keep it simple for the edit and cut side. That is if the questions would have been more unique and different for everybody I think I could have been lost in the edit and outcome of the document might have been very incoherent.
As my first longer project it really taught me a lot of working with people, doing interviews and certainly about the technical side.
There are certainly some things that I could have done better or things I could have shot more footage of. But you learn these things along the way.
Was there something that could have been good to be there, but just for sake of keeping compact length and coherency it was not included? Or it would have demanded more work and resources, perhaps demand almost another documentary all together?
Olli Tanskanen: There is always more content than what you can fit into the right length. I tried to keep the documentary in a way pretty fast paced enough to keep those people interested that are new to noise. Of course I had to cut some good content off. But it was all done to make the ”flow” better.
One challenge as a documentary first timer was, how do I keep those people interested who haven’t heard noise before. I think I made pretty ok on that side. But to be fair I still think it is more for those real noise heads. You can’t help it, if documentary maker has done noise stuff almost half of his life. After so long it is a bit hard to see this stuff from an outsiders viewpoint.
Documentaries generally are meant for broader audiences than many die-hards-only-podcasts. Do you think this documentary will reach new crowds who are not from the so called noise scene?
Olli Tanskanen: I hope this documentary will reach some people outside of the noise scene. There is always a good chance that something like this inspires new people to listen and to do noise. Finland has a big metal and punk scene, I think those people could be interested in this kind of extreme sounds. Maybe they just need a little push to get inspired!
One big thing I learned doing this was you can never shoot enough b-roll or live material.
Did you set up any restrictions for what not to really cover in documentary? I assume one was that emphasis was with new names rather than established names everybody knows of?
Olli Tanskanen: There is definitely pretty hardcore and obscure themes and visuals in Noise and Power Electronics stuff. I don’t know if there really were so called restrictions in my mind, but if I want to keep this without age restriction on youtube, meaning I want show it to bigger audience then there is definitely some parts you can’t include. When writing this I can only hope youtube will allow it in its full glory without any age restriction.
Plan was not to try make any violent shock effect with this, so I didn’t need to include material or visuals like that. More than shock and terror I want to give people pretty easy access to the great and unique noise-scene of Finland. At least for me it is something to be proud of.
When I started doing ”Land of Noise” my first choice was always youtube because it is easy to use, easy to reach and also have my documentary to be freely available.
Do you see there would be need or purpose for more documentaries? For example, some years ago Special Interests was doing some documentation focused on one artists at the time. More like single interview accompanied with visuals.
Olli Tanskanen: I feel there is always space for new documentaries or something like ”vlog” style content. Current social media and sites like youtube can offer you a platform for almost anything and with internet you always will have some audience.
We shall see how things will go. There are some plans and ideas but I can’t say in what direction it will lead. I hope that people will like ”Land of Noise” and maybe I can work with something like this in the future.
I think my d.i.y. aesthetic fits in many other genres and styles too. It would be nice to shoot one on one stuff. For example somebody actually building a noise setup and doing some testing and sounds with it. I mean not only live show content which I had in Land of Noise. Like real artist life and situations which just happen. That would really need more time and maybe some budget too. Then some artists who would want to show more of their art and creation process. If we talk about Finnish people, we aren’t always the most social and open about our life or hobbies. It is not the easiest to be in front of camera.
Last, I really want to say thank you to everybody who got involved with this. All the great artists, helping hands and live organizers. You know who you are!
I hope you like ”Land of Noise”!
Noteworthy resources:
Edge of Decay, Vigilantism, artists of the documentary and Finnish noise physical items in general, when available, distributed internationally by:
Satatuhatta https://satatuhatta.net
Freak Animal nhfastore.net
News about gigs in Finland and discussion on various things: