Murmansk is the biggest city north of the Arctic Circle – in the extreme north-west part of Russia. Its cold and isolated character led Olli and Laura from Helsinki to chose it as their band’s moniker, something that would reflect the angry yet melodic passages of their distorted shoegaze cocktail. Their brilliant second album ‘Eleven Eyes To Shade’ was released in mid-2009 and now they are about to embark on a tour in Europe, Russia and the US.
Describe your music.
Jari: It’s quite rough, ambient and distorted with lots of feedback and melody. There are some shoegaze elements, but maybe we are a little bit too aggressive for being just shoegaze.
Why are you referring to the Russian city Murmansk?
Olli: when we decided the name we were pretty drunk and we had no idea of how our sound would be like eventually. But now I think it describes it rather well.
Why Murmansk?
Laura: It’s cold and contaminated, but also beautiful and rough. That’s why.
Olli: It’s a Russian town, but the Russians have taken the name from Lappish people and Lappish Murmansk means ‘the edge of the world’. Probably the Russians don’t know that either.
Do you live off music?
Olli: If we wanted to do this for a living we wouldn’t be playing this kind of music.
To what extent does your music reflect your personalities?
Jaako: It does say quite a lot about who we are and what we are.
Olli: It’s introvert music.
Laura: Passive aggressive.
How does your debut ‘Chinese Locks’ differ from ‘Eleven Eyes To Shade’?
Olli: I think we’ve developed much more as a band.
Laura: ‘Eleven Eyes To Shade’ is a bit more concise.
How do your surroundings affect your music?
Olli: It’s not that very sunny and happy up here.
What do your lyrics talk about?
Laura: About thinks I hate and love. And that’s about it. I don’t want to elaborate. Things that annoy me and things that I like.
To what extent is the visual aspect important to the music?
Laura, Olli: It is.
Jari: We actually hired a lighting guy to come here with us instead of a sound engineer.
Laura: We want it to be a complete experience. We once collaborated with a choreographer too.
Olli: The music would go a little bit wasted if we didn’t think at all about the visual aspect.
What’s on your album cover?
Olli: It’s a photo of Greenland in the ‘60s.
What should people expect from a Murmansk live performance?
Olli: I don’t know. I’ve never seen us live. [laughs]
Laura: Bring your earplugs along!
What are your immediate plans?
Olli: We’re going to go to Russia for five gigs.
Are you actually going to play in Murmansk?
Olli: Unfortunately not, but we are going to Siberia. Five gigs on the east side of the Urals and it’s very cold over there!
Words and photo by Vasilis Panagiotopoulos
