Älymystö | |
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Origin | Helsinki/ Tampere, Finland |
Genres | Avant-garde |
Years active | 2002−present |
Labels | Independent |
Members | Ilmari Haapanen Timo Vuorensola Risto Paalanen Janos Honkonen Marko Eskola Laura Savisalo |
Website | www.alymysto.com/ |
Älymystö is a Finnish noise/ambient/industrial band which was formed in 2002 by the composer Ilmari Haapanen and the vocalist/lyricist Timo Vuorensola. [1] After the preliminary recordings the lineup was joined by Janos Honkonen ( theremin) and Risto Paalanen (guitar). With this core lineup Älymystö has published two studio albums and one EP. Currently the lineup includes also Laura Savisalo (cello) and the Farmakon bassist/vocalist Marko Eskola, who are also performing in the latest release, a split vinyl album that will be released by the end of the year 2009. [2]
Musically Älymystö mixes pure noise into industrial rhythms and ambient soundscapes. [3] The band has toured in Finland, Russia and the Baltic countries. [4] [5] [6] In Finland the band members arranged a recurring club called Vainohulluus, [7] which was dedicated for industrial, noise and experimental music. In addition to promoting Finnish avant-garde and experimental artists, it brought several notable industrial acts to the country, including Scorn and In Slaughter Natives. [8] [9]
In the autumn of 2008 Älymystö was nominated as the best noise in Helsinki by City newspaper. [10]
Älymystö is notable for their strong stance against the traditional copyright systems and the current practices of copyright advocacy groups, which they have voiced out both as a band and as individuals. [11]
All Älymystö material is published under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported licence, which grants everybody the right for non-commercial distribution of their music. Additionally they have published an official band sanctioned BitTorrent of their album Atomgrad. [12] [13] The band has not sought a recording contract with any single record label, but they have published their material in co-operation with Neuroscan, Onyxia and Skithund Records.
Timo Vuorensola is known as the director of Star Wreck, an independent sci-fi comedy that is both sold as DVDs and distributed freely over the net. [14] [15] The movie has gathered a sizable fanbase all around the world in addition to being a commercial success. The creators of Star Wreck credit free distribution as the reason for the movie's success.
In 2005 Janos Honkonen managed to provoke a large scale e-mail campaign that was targeting the Finnish Parliament. [16] The issue in stake was a new problematic copyright law (nicknamed Lex Karpela after the culture minister Tanja Karpela) that was about to be ratified. [17] The campaign was noted widely in the mainstream media and the law, that was ready to be ratified, was returned to the Grand Committee for a second reading. [18] In the end no changes were made to its contents.