Tähtitarha

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Interview : Teemu from "Tähtitarha"

When and how was your band created?
The band was founded in 1998. I was looking for players just to try out my new songs, just to check out how they would work. First I found Toni, he seemed to have same opinions about music and other stuff, he had another band too then, so I stealed their bassplayer and drummer too. Only in our first rehearsals we found out that the songs worked, and the group worked too.

Since then I have played with Toni and bassplayer Kari, then Antti came to drums and Sami to play rhythmguitar, so I could just focus on singing on stage.

Where is the name of the band coming from?
It´s pretty much an ironic name. If you try to translate it to english, it could be something like "starincorporated". It can`t be translated to one word, in finnish it`s something like "a group of stars", and when you see stars on the sky at night, it`s also "Tähtitarha".

What musicians or artists did have a major influence in your life / work?
I`m interested in producing too, in fact we produced our first single by ourselves with Miitri Aaltonen. It´s called "jäljet" and it´s coming out this month via Universal music.
I respect artists that have varied their career and can do many kinds of songs and styles, but you can always hear something in common between the songs. Strong personalities like Bowie and Trent Reznor for example.

What are the positive and negative aspects of being a musician / singer (in Finland)?
Markets are quite small, so you can`t sell millions of records here, or tour for months.
But on our top album lists 50 per cent of the artists are Finnish, so that is good.
Finland is such a small country that if you do good music, you don´t have to promote your band and records so much than maybe elsewhere in order to become known. But there are always same rules in the music-business.. you can never know what people will think , you just have to write songs and hope they`ll like them. It´s positive that so many Finnish band have made international careers these days. There are a lot of good bands here.

How could you qualify your style of music?
Our music includes elements of pop,hardrock, a little bit of metal and goth-music. Good melodies are always important to us.

Have you ever considered the possibilty to change totally your style of music?
Not with this band now, but I like singer/songwriter kind of music too, so maybe a Jeff Buckley -kind of project would be nice someday. But I like also industrial and metal, so maybe that would be nice too, some day.. There are so many music styles that could be nice to work with someday. But at this moment I´m happy with what we are doing.

What is your favorite song in your repertoire and why?
I have to answer "Jäljet", because it´s our first single-release.

Do you tour regularly? Do you actually prefer performing your music live or in a studio?
We haven`t toured so much yet, only about ten, twenty gigs a year, but we have a short eight gig tour with Nerdee, Beats and styles and Dallas superstars this month, We will tour the biggest cities in Finland. Hopefully we can do more gigs next year.
I like studiowork a lot, but you can vary songs live and different audiences and moods have always different effects on us. So I prefer playing live.

During the process of making an album or a single, what is the moment that you prefer?
We haven´t made an album yet, but we have studio experience with our earlier bands and demo/ singlesessions with Tähtitarha.. Well, maybe the best part is when you`re listening to the song in studio, it`s almost ready, you finish up your work and notice that it sounds just like you thought it should sound.
When you sit at home and a new song is ready, that can be the most exciting feeling too.

What kind of music / What artists do you currently listen?
I listen to all kinds of music and I have favorites in almost every category, as well blues as metal.. u2 is great, Muse.. depeche mode, radiohead and nineties seattle bands.. finnish bands like Him, Kotiteollisuus... system of a down.. Ask me tomorrow and the list will be different again, there are great bands and songs everywhere.

A stupid question but... what is among all the songs you've been listening in your life the BEST song?
Impossible to say, I really can`t . I hope that i haven`t heard it yet:).

Internet is something interesting for musicians because it gives them the opportunity to touch a larger audience but it is also a threat for them (regarding the copyrights). What is your opinion regarding this medium?
Internet is a good medium, but piratism and copyright law questions are big problems. Kids will soon wonder why they should buy a record cause they can always load it somewhere for free. They start to think that music belongs
to everybody for free. People don´t often understand that there´s not so much difference between stealing something from the shop and loading all music for free. But there are also a lot of good sides in new technology.

What are your actual and future projects?
I´m writing new songs, Our schedules for next year are quite open at the moment. Let´s see if we could release our first album next spring or summer.
Interview by Vincent Lefrançois - 2003