Mustapiste

Experimental art review

  • What’s the deal with jazz and cats? One can go down quite a rabbit hole to discover why musicians in the jazz world call each other “cats”, in my interpretation it’s something to do with the skill of improvisation – or maybe adaptation to an environment – or something along those lines.

  • Interbody is the sophomore release of Heli Hartikainen, following their extremely well received Chronovariations (September 2024). I’ll start this review with a question: Is the second step always harder than the first?

  • Queuing with the same crowd to be seen in kompleksi to go inside the Helsinki Cathedral for a HMW event, I started to feel myself being placed into an aestheticisation of urban nightlife – a sanitised, costly and branded experience: “This is what it is to be a cool young adult in Helsinki!”

  • To me, the Blowup evening at Tallinn Music Week 2026 felt less like a genre showcase and more like a way of thinking about music: intense, risky, atmospheric, and unwilling to settle into one category.

  • Before stepping in, a cheerful notice advertising the concert greets me outside, “ANOTHER LAYER” preceded by two slightly out of phase waves upon which the names of the performers hang and bob. Beneath this, a guitar.