Flow Festival - Clash Reports

Finnish Music was not my mastermind subject much before my invite to Helsinki’s sixth Flow Festival last weekend but an eclectic line up of home-grown and international acts have proven the city to have some emerging greats of their own hiding behind that front of Finnish reserve.

While many of you will only have heard of the festival because of Lily Allen’s meltdown on stage – “her back hurt” – 40,000 people flocked to the urban festival site across the four days. Swedish acts like The Knife, Fever Ray, Jenny Wilson, Frida Hyvonen, First Aid Kit, Those Dancing Days have been grabbing attention in the UK and beyond for a while now, but these are the names to watch out for in the coming months as the Fins take their turn in the international spotlight: Le Corps Mince de Françoise, Rubik, Pintandwefall, Vuk, Villa Nah, Joensuu 1685 and Top Billin DJs.

Day One
Well Night One really. We touched down in Finland a little later than planned after BA had to replace a wheel on our plane (WHY do they tell you these things?) and hitch a lift to the site with Alexandra who is looking after Grace Jones’ rider but not Lily Allen as she is “too easy.” Grace had asked for oysters in Jamaican Sauce, kept at room temperature, and an accordion player, apparently. Alexandra sharpens her talons, and we follow in her wake across Suvilahti, the disused power plant that forms the festival’s setting and a polite, quiet, older crowd of punters at Flow’s Opening Night concert.

Suvilahti is set for renovation in 2010, and is an area where much official money has been plugged to build new housing. It may be cynical of me to think that hosting a Madonna concert for 80,000 in the nearby vicinity the week before, and then opening Flow up to a bigger audience is simply a property development showcase and marketing trick, but if it was, at least the soundtrack was a good one.

German electro act Kraftwerk, the headliners of the night, are a difficult concept live – four men standing in front of their machines for two hours – yet kicking off with Man Machine was a fantastic plan for the festival setting against a back drop of fairy-light-blinged towering chimneys and skeletal metal structures and the ensuing set was strong including Tour de France.

Like at A&R Blackberry gigs, the tame 6000-strong crowd stood and quietly nodded their enjoyment in their designated drinking and non-drinking enclosures – the Fins are such big drinkers they have many strict laws to protect them from themselves.

Day Two
Friday night and the site was busier, packed full of a crowd of younger, more stylish punters ready for their dose of Indie and Electro. Diesel: U: Music tour winners Heartsrevolution were early birds on the Tent Stage – the US trio of watery zodiac signs Lo, Ben and Prince Terrence took time away from their ice cream van to wear Acne and play a fired-up short, sharp set of mischievous dance-to-it electro-rock. Then it was over to the main stage for an incredibly glam Frida Hyvönen. The Swedish singer-songwriter started the weekend’s big trend for all-female acts that would later be followed by Le Corps Mince de Françoise, Pintandwefall, and the Vivian Girls. Planning new mixed media projects this autumn and writing her new album in Bali in winter, Frida graced stage and piano playing tracks from this year’s Silence is Wild album to a rapturous audience.

Back at the Tent Stage the Finnish all-girl acts were setting up, as fresh-faced Zorro-masked foursome Pintandwefall swapped instruments and shared time on lead vocals and centre stage throughout a charismatic The Hives inspired set of shouty garage punk songs including ‘Zombie’ and my personal favourite, ‘Bird of The Birds’ which you can hear on their MySpace now. With a strong local following, their singer Dumb Pint reminiscent of Ida Maria, and a third album on the way these sour-sweet songsters should go far. Much like their friends and fellow Fins, the all-girl trio Le Corps Mince de Françoise. Playing new material and showcasing a shift to a slower, more 90s, MIA-influenced set like a punkish Late of the Pier, these ladies were hands-down my favourite act of the weekend and with support-dates for Peaches and UK lives dates coming up this autumn they are dead cert ones to watch for the likes of you. While I was already a fan of their more 80s electro sound on tracks like ‘Bitch of the Bitches’ and ‘Ray-Ban Glasses’ their upcoming Kitsune single ‘Something Golden’ is a definite winner.

Day Three
Not too bothered about catching Eurovision entry Regina, I instead head for a shop and stroll around the city centre taking in Marc Jacobs at the up-market store Beam on Erottajankatu. Back on site, I watch the all-male Finnish group Rubik before chatting to them backstage. The band, who look like a blonde Kings of Leon before they found razors and sound like a cross between Animal Collective, Flaming Lips, TV on the Radio and Arcade Fire but with more verve and a quirky lead singer with fantastic stage presence. The band release their second album Dada Bandits on September 15 in the US and Canada and are already garnering a good response with Rolling Stone and the like. Plug into their magical prog-pop experimentica, especially ‘Goji Berries'.

Later NYC’s Vivian Girls were by contrast, disappointingly, or perhaps just out-of-place laid-back with their Tent Stage set of Brookyln garage rock yet can’t be faulted for too long as they did play top shoegaze-meets-Spector renditions of album closer ‘I Believe In Nothing’ and ‘Tell The World’. Perhaps they, much like White Lies and Handsome Furs after them, just knew that nobody could match the stage presence of the night’s headliner Grace Jones, who played the same set as on her UK tour, kicking off Nightclubbing and including the now infamous hula-hooping and costume changes. Not bad for a 61-year-old Diva mind, and the crowd were more than happy.

Day Four
A day for innovative Swedish acts, Sunday was also a day for thunderstorms and the day before the audience had to “work tomorrow, which is a bit shit isn’t it” as an ‘emotional’ Lily Allen later put it to us on stage. Innovative multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter and ex-Dirty Projector, Vuk started off the day at the Tent Stage playing startlingly beautiful tracks from her lucid dream of an album The Plains. Half American and half Finnish, Vuk (which means ‘wolf’) will be heading out as support act for Fever Ray’s US tour and will also be playing the UK this autumn.

Next up, The Knife’s guest vocalist Jenny Wilson danced about the stage in a floor-length electric blue kaftan and matching bold eye make-up. The former First Floor Power artist appeared to be having a ball on stage, despite a gruelling festival schedule taking in Oya and Roskilde, as she performed tracks on themes of Motherhood and adjustment from her 2009 album Hardships! She later told me she is planning on making new percussive remixes of the album with a view to recording and releasing them in the future.

Looking like she’d stepped out of Natasha Khan’s wardrobe in a sequined bolero jacket and big metallic eyes, Lily Allen was late starting her set only to broke down in tears on stage because she ‘fell over and hurt her back’. Apologising about crying on stage for the first time, Lily appeared sniffy and tearful throughout her stage time, repeatedly asking the audience to dance for her as she couldn’t, and turning to ‘alternative treatments’ – “I’m Lily on the wine” – to get her through the set. She managed to struggle through ‘Fuck You’ and ‘Smile’, but often veered out of tune and a disappointed sell-out crowd sloped off grumbling while we waited it out for Fever Ray. Lily was later seen being assisted into her hotel by a minder, a little ‘worse for wear.’

The Fever Ray lamp and laser show more than made up for Lily’s misfortune, however. Hiding in the shadows, as those who have seen their smaller gigs have come accustomed to, the main stage provided the space to really do justice to neon green shoots of light, cloudscapes and a morse code of flashing lampshades while The Knife’s Karin Dreijer Andersson’s vocals danced under visuals, weaving dark magic, prehistoric folk feeling into a digital age with tracks like the mind-blowing ‘When I Grow Up’ to provide a major highlight of the weekend.

All in all, Flow was a safe, clean festival with a decent line-up, with downsides of an unexpectedly pretentious crowd and a need for an injection of atmosphere. While many European festivals can seem like viable options in credit-crunched times, the big drinkers amongst you would not enjoy the 6 Euro price tag of a can of Fosters or Strongbow or the 10 Euro cost of festival grub. Finnish music, style and Helsinki boutique shops, cool bars and sightseeing could swing the deal for you though, as with bands not starting until 2.30pm each day, the weekend offers plenty of opportunity to get out and about in the city as well.

Words by Susie Wild