18-10-2009 Tsukicon

Supports: ; Venue:
By: Sabine van Gameren

Tsukicon is a festival in Helsinki (Finland) which is all about Japan. It is not about Japanese music, but also about street fashion and other things that are hot and going in Japan.
For the music Gloria opened his doors for the festival and on the Sunday three bands were playing.

Before the venue even opened there was already quite a queue in front of the door. The audience seemed to be dominated by young, hip, females all fully dressed up in all different sorts of outfits. Fairytale princesses to a Pikachu suit, it was all there and these Japanese bands playing unites them.

The first band to enter the stage is Aicle. The band formed in 2006 but seemed to be very known by the audience. They are dressed in colorful outfits and the hair matches the outfit. This is one of the things that stands for the music they make. Funky, happy songs came from their site after the band introduced their selves to the audience by stepping up to a crate before taking their instruments in hands. Only a wink is enough to make the women in the front row scream. The band often goes into the crowdpleasing and make the audience move along to their moves. Very sweet pop music is what followed. As the above description had pointed you in the way of a typical teenage pop band of which you don’t have to have any expectations you might be utterly wrong. The band shows they are capable enough with their instruments and capture your attention longer than you might expect. Not bad at all!

The second band left the bright colours at home and is definitely a bit harder than Aicle. Their name is Vistlip and they are more based on riffs and speed changes in their songs than Aicle. The band brought their first releases to the world in 2008 and seem to go steady and strong since. A nice list with upcoming gigs is on their MySpace and here in Finland they are a success as well. To mention about Vistlip is that they are not that much of a show band in the way that their appearance comes before the music. It does play a role in their overall act, but what comes first is the music and that pleases you with the fact that some more complicated music is performed in which variance of the songs seems to be an important part. They band played a splendid set, leaving you with that tiny bit of hungry for more, with the future in mind we write down the name of Vistlip on the list of bands to keep an eye on.

Headliner of the evening and definitely the hardest rockband here was Dio – Distraught Overlord. It is not the first time that the band has been in Finland and they know how to converse quite well. The band started with some quiet songs compared to the center of the set which is way more aggressive and certainly faster than anything that I have heard before. Also, what I have not seen before this evening, but brought by this band is the communication within the band. You can so clearly notice that these guys know eachother very well and dare to look each other in the eyes while rocking. The other bands seemed to be more shy towards each other and in the cases they did have communication going during their playing it seems a bit acted. It was good to see that the enthusiasm of this band made up a lot of this all and with this element in their show it makes them the top act of the evening. Not all of the audience seemed to have stayed around, but surely most of the people appreciated the band a lot. This band must be seen, whenever they cross your path.

More pictures of this gig available at sabinevangameren.com

Links:
Aicle official
Vistlip MySpace
DIO MySpace