INCREASINGLY, as the music industry shifts its focus to the live circuit in order to combat tumbling album sales, bands and artists are turning to performing some of their best-known albums in the live setting. Everyone from Metallica, to Roger Waters and the Pixies have indulged their fan base with note perfect renditions of their back catalogue.
Helsinki, prepare to get animated!
GUARANTEED to help melt the scowl that still permeates after enduring the long, dark winter here up north, the Animatricks Animation Festival is being held 25-27 April in the Capital Region.
Bringing together animation professionals and fans, the festival has been offering up new Finnish animation and selections of international tops since 2000. Bestowing prizes for local Finnish animation since 2005, this year sees the festival expanding to an international competition, sponsored by Rovio, responsible of the global sensation Angry Birds.
All's film in Love & Engineering
PREMIERING around the country on 9 May, local documentary Love & Engineering tells the tale of a group of foreign digital computer geeks living in Finland who are looking for real love.
Weird & wonderful Visions
HOSTING another rousing collection of the best weird and wonderful cinema going around, the Spring Night Visions Festival is hitting Helsinki from 9 to 13 April.
The biggest and the oldest festival in Finland to focus on horror, fantasy, science fiction and action cinema, previous years have offered up some genuine classics of the genre, along with the appearance of many international guests on offer over the years.
Youngblood of the blues
TOUTED as the cosmic American love child of Howlin Wolf and Link Wray, local blues fans can judge for themselves when Alvin Youngblood Hart performs around the country in April.
Dropping his outstanding debut full-length in 1996, Big Mama'S Door, containing such tracks as covers of well-known folk songs like When the Boys Were on the Western Plain and Gallows Pole, Hart has gone on to release a handful of albums to varying levels of acclaim.