noisedfisk

An interview with Ultrasport

2005.06.23

— Music

Ultrasport hail from Finland and their music is just everything you’d expect from a great indie-pop band influenced by the Lucksmiths and 22-Pistepirkko. They’ve just released a debut album, Nothing can go wrong, that will probably find a good place in my personal top 10 at the end of the year. And they’re nice guys: they’ve answered some questions by e-mail. That’s the first interview published by Noisedfisk and it won’t be the last, hopefully!

Who are Ultrasport?
Sami and I were the nucleus of ultrasport, we started out drinking and talking about music. After a while we realized we probably should do something with our dreams of starting a great pop band. We realized we needed more people so we attached Samuli, a friend of Sami to our nucleus. The year was 2000. Fast forward to 2001 and we realized we needed a drummer to really get our live show going. We met Olli when we played at a club he was organizing, he seemed like an all round nice guy and a great drummer so we grabbed him and have not let go ever since.

I haven’t found your debut album yet but the couple of songs I downloaded are just fantastic. Can you tell us a bit more about this album?
The sole reason this album exists is the Japanese Quince Records. We had recorded a five track EP and were shopping around for a license contract when all of a sudden Quince contacts us and says they want to release a full length from us. They specifically wanted to release stuff from our older EP’s alongside with the new material but we were a bit concerned it would sound like a compilation. Luckily we managed to lure our good friend Petri Nakari from the band Red Carpet to remix the older recordings so the album would have a more consistent sound and feeling. He did just that and suddenly we had a debut album on our hands.

There’s a link from your website to the Lucksmiths. And to tell you the truth, I find that your music is pretty close to the Lucksmiths…
I think we do sound a bit like The Lucksmiths, maybe there’s a similar vibe or maybe we share some influences. We have quite a healthy indie scene here in Finland and there are lots of bands we have similarities (and share members) with, like Harry Hunks and Red Carpet. We do feel pretty close to the Swedish indie scene, there seems to be many people there who share our musical tastes, especially on the Labrador label. And they are our neighbours after all.
When it comes to our influences, I guess what you listen always tends to creep into your music in some way. At the moment I’ve been listening to a lot of older Bruce Springsteen, The Magnetic Fields and Hidden Cameras. I always thought that there’s some echos of earlier R.E.M. in our music, plus some Hefner and maybe Belle and Sebastian. And definitely 22-Pistepirkko.

How do you feel about the finnish music scene and the finnish cultural life?
Slightly problematic geographical location, unique history and probably some weird genes result in what we call Finnish mentality. It does differ from the rest of the world in some ways… we do have a penchant for deadpan humour and melancholy bordering on comical among other things. Then again we are very much a part of Europe culturally so there are probably as many similarities as there are differences. We tend to mix Bordeaux wine and Parma ham with high suicide rates and excessive drinking, so to speak.
At the moment the Finnish indie scene seems very much alive, lots of great active bands and few good clubs as well. Only problem is that Finland really is small and therefore when you’re in the marginal you really are small…
We have a great portal for Finnish indie if you are interested, it’s called One Chord To Another and it’s maintained by Vesa Lautamäki.

You said to me once that “many people in Finland feel that we are part of Scandinavia… or at least as much a part of Scandinavia as Iceland is”. Can you tell us more about that?
Well, strictly speaking Scandinavia is the cultural and historic region of the Scandinavian Peninsula and that only includes Sweden, Norway and Denmark. In a broader sense the term Scandinavia is quite often used to describe Nordic countries which both Finland and Iceland are a part of. Nitpicking is so rock’n'roll! :D I guess we Finns are just oversensitive when it comes to us and our place in the grander scheme of things. Tiny Country Syndrome, I guess, we fear we’ll always be labeled as “that tiny country that’s practically part of Russia”…

Any chance to see Ultrasport tour Europe?
Definitely! Just point us to your local club organizer/venue or arrange something on your own. We play pretty much anything if it doesn’t cost us too much money and we are planning on touring Central Europe this autumn. Only thing we need is help, we don’t have vast knowledge on different countries scenes and when you are Doing It Yourself the knowledge means everything. No wait, wasn’t it time? Ah… :D

What’s the best novel and the best film by a scandinavian author/director in your opinion?
The book is probably Supernaive by Erlend Loe but the movie is harder… hmm… I’ll have to say Drifting Clouds (Kauas Pilvet Karkaavat) by Aki Kaurismäki is pretty close to being the best. Though Together (Tilsammans) by Lukas Moodyson is pretty close too. Feel-good movies.

Listen to Ultrasport on their website.
Buy Nothing can go Wrong on Fraction Discs or Darla.

Many thanks to Juho…

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