ILMIÖ

On July 27th, I went to Ilmiö festival in Turku. Held in and around the Uittamo dance pavilion and beach, this festival is the predecessor/successor to H2Ö that was held at the Ruissalo docks (I wrote about that one in 2014 and 2016). Similarly to H2Ö, Ilmiö made good use of its environment, with lots of interesting art installations and fun little details all over the place. There were also multiple stages, most of them small, with all kinds of performers from punk to folk and spoken word to experimental electronics. I had a great time at the festival, encountered interesting new bands and ran into many old friends. I don’t spend a lot of time in Finland these days, so it felt really good to get to reconnect with some people.

Musically, my favourite ended up being Vanishing Twin. Their songs had very interesting structures, weaving different instruments together beautifully. The gig was inside the dance pavilion in the early evening, and it was a very hot Saturday, so the atmosphere turned out semi-tropical - you could practically see steam rising from the crowd, and it was almost too hot to dance.

I think pictures speak a lot louder than words when it comes to festival reports, so I’ll just switch over to visual language now!