Phantom

The UFO is an ultrasonic MIDI controller designed to let you control your music software and external synthesizers with hand gestures.

The UFO controller uses five ultrasonic sensors and captures gestures, based on distance detection. The vertical movement of your hand above any of the sensors is converted to standard MIDI data.

Here’s a video demo of the UFO being used to control Ableton Live 8:



The UFO was designed by Finnish sound designer and musician Tommi Koskinen. Here’s Koskinen improvising with the UFO:



The UFO is an Arduino-based project that’s under development. You can find out more about the project at his ‘UFO landing page’, theUFOcontroller.com.

via TechCrunch - Synthtopia

Arduino has found its way into yet another musical device. I came across the ‘UFO’ while in Berlin. It’s a MIDI controller that lets you compose music or control synthesizers by waving your hands about.

Its creator, a Finnish former game developer named Tommi Koskinen, built it for use in performances with his band Phantom. After co-founding a company called Audiodraft and building games for several years for companies like Digital Chocolate and GameHouse, Koskinen said he felt a desire to build something more tangible. He was inspired by a performance he saw at a Helsinki art festival a year ago.

“There was this one artist that was using sonic sensors to control visuals and some tonalities,” Koskinen said. “There where I got this idea. I really wanted to have a device like that, where I could use my hands to control my own music and have it in a standalone box that could connect to any laptop or synthesizer.”

After some design courses at a university, he started prototyping a device.

To be clear, this isn’t a MIDI theremin (or one of those instruments that was popular in 50s sci-fi films), since the technology is different. Theremins use radio frequency oscillators while the UFO is ultrasonic. It emits sounds that aren’t detectable by the human ear and then senses echoes to measure distance. Based on the distance of your hands from the device, the UFO can control the pitch of a sound or push a track through a low-pass filter or add other effects to varying degrees.

It converts the distance of your hands from the device into MIDI data that can be fed into audio sequencing software like Ableton Live.

You can also use it to compose music. There’s a mode that he built that lets the UFO send MIDI notes and lets you control it like a virtual air keyboard. Each sensor can emit a different note (like on a pentatonic scale for example), and when you move your hand from left to right, it can be like doing a glissando on a piano. There’s a video demo below of that mode.

Koskinen just has one device right now, but he says he’d consider open-sourcing parts of the design (with the exception of the laser-cut casing). - TechCrunch

Kuuntele: Phantom radiossa ja radion klubilla
MUSIIKKI 7.9.2012, klo 12:59 Aino Frilander
Radio Helsingissä vierailee klo 14 suomalainen elektropopyhtye Phantom, joka esiintyy illalla myös Radio Helsingin klubilla Kutosella.

Vuoden alussa perustettu Phantom julkaisi Scars-ep:nsä keväällä, ja sitä esittelivät niin musiikkisivusto Pitchfork kuin The XX -yhtyekin. Kannattaa siis kuunnella ja tulla.

Kyseessä on radion syksyn ensimmäinen klubi-ilta, ja levymusiikista vastaavat dj:t Nick Triani, Harvest ja Marko Makelove.

Radio Helsinkiä voit kuunnella klikkaamalla tästä.

Phantom Radio Helsingin klubilla Kuudennella linjalla (Kaikukatu 4) klo 22–04. Liput 8 euroa. - nyt.fi

Basso Livessä Phantom 16.11. 2012. Yhtye esitti Basson aamussa kappalee Kisses.
Video: Jussi Sirviö & Annika Ranin - Basso Radio

The new season of Best Fit little sister site Ja Ja Ja’s upcoming showcase is edging closer, so ahead of it we speak to Helsinki based band Phantom. They’ll be playing on a live bill that includes some of the best sounds coming out of the Nordic countries in one of London’s finest live music hangouts, The Lexington. So while they are a long way from home we delve beneath Finland’s ‘deep and dark’ music scene to discover a little about the band origins.

It soon becomes clear that almost everything that is needed to be known is in the band’s name – haunting music, genre defying eerie soundscapes, “You can’t run from your own shadow”, Hanna Toivonen unnervingly sings on The xx co-signed track ‘Scars’ – all of which is derived from ‘phantomising’; a musical hybrid of Toivonen’s jazz credentials and Tommi Koskinen’s production prowess, encompassed on the evocative four-song Scars EP which undoubtedly hints at more great things to come.

For those who don’t know, who are Phantom?

Phantom is Hanna Toivonen and Tommi Koskinen from Helsinki. It is originated in the deep, dark underground of the Helsinki music scene (it’s just deep and dark down there anyway). Hanna is the singer and songwriter, also a former jazz student from Sibelius Academy and the co-Founder of a soon-to-be-launched music discovery app Clerkd by Mukava Music. Tommi is the producer and sound designer (Phantom & Kitkaliitto), a new media and sound design student in Aalto School of Arts and UDK and also Co-Founder of AudioDraft.

Why did you decide on that name – there’s something wonderfully ghostly about your music?

Actually it has parts of both of our first names (and a P), but right after we decided upon the name we started calling our musical [collaboration]“phantomising”. It put together both of our backgrounds and described the soundscape we were after. It worked really well for the Scars EP and the band name was perfectly concretised with the ‘Scars’ music video by our friends at Delicode Ltd. The music of Phantom is certainly something that is eerie and ghostly.

What made you want to go into music?

Both of us have been involved with music for most of our lives. With very different backgrounds of course. Hanna has been doing classical, jazz and pop for years and Tommi’s been doing electronic music for over 15 years. We got together as Phantom simply because it was easy and fun to work together and we realised that the sound that we created was something we both agreed on and liked.
Could you explain the single ‘Scars’? What’s it about and what was the recording process like?

Hanna: This is actually the song that kick-started the whole project. I composed the draft of it on an airplane from Sydney to London and thought instantly that I wanted to finish it with Tommi. Then we decided to do a whole EP, a music video for it and went to SXSW to release them.

Tommi: Hanna originally played the raw piano and vocal sketch of the song and it felt instantly that there’s big potential in the song. One day we recorded the vocals and piano tracks at the studio and then we started working on the soundscape. Without any conscious decisions, the production and the sounds were drifting towards trip hop influenced downtempo filled with sonic textures of granular synthesis, analogue tape delays and massive reverberations. Piece by piece, iteration by iteration, it just all came together pretty quick. We recorded and finished the whole Scars EP songs in just one month. After a regular work day at our daily jobs, the work continued almost every evening at the studio.

The music has a bit of an R&B feel about it. You guys are Scandinavian and at first people don’t think that place goes with that genre – when you go deeper down though, you see the likes of Neneh Cherry and even Robyn and Little Dragon for recent examples. Is this a genre that you grew up listening to?

We had no conscious decision to make any particular kind of music, so the hints of R&B must be very subliminal in there. Neither of us is an R&B person, but with our different musical backgrounds combined, it might have evoked some grooves and arrangements like that.

What artist has had the single most influence on the band’s sound?

It’s really almost impossible to name any single artist that has had most influence. Our different musical backgrounds just influence the music we’re doing and blend with the “phantomisation” process into something that’s called the sound of Phantom.

Do you feel that the burgeoning Nordic music scene is given enough credit? People seem very bogged down with the American and British scene and do you feel Ja Ja Ja has helped shine a light on what’s going on over there?

We think there’s a rise of the Scandinavian music wave coming soon. A lot of interesting material is coming out from the region these days so it will definitely get the attention eventually. In the end, the region where the music comes from doesn’t matter that much. The culture of the region obviously has some influence to the sound, but it all eventually comes down to just individually good songs and artists. It might be also a cultural difference here, but in Finland for example the producers don’t come as easily out of their bedrooms to broadcast their creative work out to the world. They need a little bit of push for that and websites like Ja Ja Ja can really help them to get their music out there. We don’t know for sure, but it was probably the Ja Ja Ja blog post about Phantom that triggered The xx to notice us.
To inform us a little, who is your favourite and current Nordic artist at the minute – someone who we should check out (except for yourselves of course!)

Hanna: Lately some Scandinavian artists I’ve been listening to Gracias, Highasakite, Milesmore and some Husky Rescue remixes.

Tommi: I would say one of the most interesting producers from Finland is Desto. I’m really looking forward to seeing his live show with Jimi Tenor at the Insomnia Festival in Norway. I haven’t listened to the albums yet, but seeing Karin Park from Sweden live was really inspiring for me.

The xx gave you a co-sign didn’t they!? How did it feel to have a band as successful as them share your music?

First we really couldn’t believe that they had shared the ‘Scars’ video. We both respect and like The xx a lot, so it felt quite extraordinary that they had accessed our music and liked it enough to let their fan base know about it :).

Aside from the next week’s showcase, what are your upcoming plans with recording new material and touring?

We have some gigs lined up for the rest of the year and we’re currently working on our first album and we are really making finishing off the album our first priority. We expect it to be ready by the Summer 2013. We are still considering all the options with labels, management, booking etc. and are talking with handful of them at the moment.

Lastly, can you describe your music in 5 words or less?

Phantomised (Cinematic, Eerie, Electronic)

Phantom will be playing Ja Ja Ja at The Lexington in London on Thursday 27 September. Tickets are available here. - The Line of Best Fit

Määd yläfemmat -sarja haastattelee ja kuvaa kaikki Basson radiovieraat.

Pienoisen nettihypen alla oleva helsinkiläinen Phantom vieraili perjantaiaamuna Toimistoradiossa. The xx -yhtyeen omaan Tumblr-blogiin lisäämä ja Pitchforkin huomioima duo Tommi Koskinen ja Hanna Toivonen heittivät lähetyksen jälkeen femmat ja vastasivat Määdin kysymyksiin.

Mikä inspiroi teitä tällä hetkellä?

H: Kaikki elävä elämä ja sen pienet ilot. Näin keväällä ainakin aurinko ja jäätelö.

T: Vapaus, ja viimeisen vuoden aikana omaan elämään tullut rakkaus. Myös se, että voin tehdä nyt juuri niitä projekteja joita haluan.

Mitä musaa kuuntelette tällä hetkellä?
H: Eddie Vedder, Popof – Serenity (Noob remix) ja Gold Panda. Niin ja Mumford & Sons, niiden lyriikoista oon saanut paljon ideoita omiini.

T: Vähän hitaampia biittejä, wonky tyylistä musaa, esimerkiksi Flying Lotusta. Myös Gold Pandaa, siitä oon ottanut paljon vaikutteita.

Mitä tekisitte, jos olisitte eläkkeellä ja aikaa olisi rajattomasti?

H: Kokkaisin vegesuperruokia, soittaisin pianoa, uisin meressä ja kävisin yksin metsässä kävelyillä.

T: Haluisin olla hullu keksijä. Siinä vaiheessa on kuitenkin tärkeää, että on joku jonka kanssa voi viettää aikaa ja jakaa elämänsä.

Mitkä on teidän värit?

H: Musta, se toimii muiden värien kanssa tosi hyvin, ei niinkään yksinään.

T: Vihreä, se on ollut muksusta asti mun väri. Johtuneeko siitä että synnyin kesällä.

Millä termillä tilaatte oluen baaritiskillä?

H: Mitä bissejä teillä on?

T: Yks bisse kiitti.

Phantomiin voit tutustua tarkemmin duon kotisivuilla. - Basso Radio

Uncharted is our weekly showcase of rising artists. This week, Jon Pappo profiles Helsinki’s electronic duo Phantom.

…

Helsinki—as the summer settles, the blistering cold enters and the dark nights force the bodies indoors. Inside dimly lit warm rooms, tinkering away with the sounds of icy machines—Tommi Koskinen and Hanna Toivonen are Phantom. Emerging in the beginning of 2012—entrenched in the processes of mainframes digital explorations and experiments with the self and technology. The dissipating voice looping cutting scraping leaving returning. The hum of the acoustics wrapped in data techno electro samples synths.

Hanna’s warm soothing voice coursing through the buzzing click clack of encroaching piano, incorporation of the self into the technological—seeing the scars, the human outside of the machine. The cold sounds come from a joyful experiment with capability, possibility, and mutability—the openness of technology. The burgeoning—being found, being heard, being shared and negotiations made when you can’t leave the house.

The inner and outer worlds collide.
Your bio says Phantom only began about four months ago, but already you’ve garnered a bit of acclaim around the world. Can you tell me a bit about both your projects before Phantom and how the two of you came together?

It’s funny how things happen in this world, because we actually met by accident last summer at a start-up company co-working space called Aalto Venture Garage. We were both involved in music start-ups and had a background in music, so when we first met we decided to see what happens if we try to create music together. What comes to our own projects, Tommi has been producing electronic music for almost 15 years and has done some jazzy techno and deep house releases with his band Kitkaliitto. Hanna has been active alternative and jazz singer in various bands and has her music education background in Sibelius Academy.



What’s your life like in Helsinki? Have you both lived their all of your lives? How has it affected your sound, if at all, and where are you situated within a larger music scene?

The life in Helsinki and Finland is generally great and we’ve both lived here for the most of our lives. During the summer it’s warm and beautiful and people are smiling and super-friendly. But as you can probably imagine, the long dark and cold period that lasts for about 8 months each year, takes its toll. Some people can get really tired and depressed, but it’s also perfect for the creative and hard-working Finns. We hide in our studios to make music and polish it until the fine point of perfection. The environment we live in has definitely affected our music. Not just a little bit, but a lot.

In the larger music scene, we are definitely underground. But the underground scene in Helsinki for example is really blooming. There are lot of really cutting edge electronic music acts here and really good gigs and club events going on.



The music video for “Scars” is incredibly affecting, encapsulating your digitally based, but soulful sound. Were you at all involved with the process of making the video? How does technology, and the possibility of humanity in technology, inspire you?

Yes, we were involved in the project with the video creators from Delicode Ltd and Studio Lumikuu. All the material in the video was shot in just few hours and we actually saw the end result in real time while we acted the scenes. Delicode guys have really mastered the visualization of Kinect camera data and just to give you guys a little teaser: You’ll actually see the application work in real time with all those cool effects when we’re playing live.

New technological innovations really inspire us and we also want to keep Phantom open for any kind of technological experiments. All the open source hardware movements, hackers and makers can help people to realize that “Hey, basically I can do this and that myself and I don’t need to buy it from the shop.” – and that’s fucking cool. As people play more in the free time, a lot of new products and world changing ideas will come up for sure. Plus, more fun!



What is the UFO, or MIDI Theremin that you’ve created? Is creating new technology important to your project as musicians? How does it help to expand your sound?

The UFO is basically a self-built MIDI controlled with 5 sensors detecting your hand gesture movements. It’s not actually a Theremin but it can be played like one. In the long run, we hope that the UFO thingie is just the beginning. And yes, the tech is important and helps you to distinguish yourself from the other bands as the field is really competitive. The UFO was of course designed to look extremely cool when played live ; ).



2012 is already turning to be positive for you two, with a gig at SXSW and the xx giving you a huge push. What is the rest of the year looking like for Phantom? What are your larger ambitions as a duo?

We’re currently working on new material that will manifest itself as a new EP or a Long Play later this year. The next Scars has already been summoned in the studio ; ). We have some gigs lined up for the Summer in Finland and Germany and more will be coming very likely, but before touring extensively we really want to finish the good stuff, the music for you guys. - ChartAttack

It isn’t easy to get positive recognition from a group like The XX, but Helsinki duo made it seem pretty easy. The British group dropped Phantom’s newest track on their Tumblr yesterday, a track from a group that has apparently been around only since the beginning of this year. This eerie clip isn’t just scary, it features some incredible vocals over a rather sultry beat – something we’ve come to known from the xx as well. If this is the quality that Phantom can put out after only being around for four months, who knows what we’ll have another year from now. But we can tell you this much – it’ll be good. - Swipelife

The XX shared their video last week. Phantom are a new band from Finland and again the yeah! goes on with Finnish bands being awesome. - Nordic by Nature Berlin

Se você nunca ouviu falar do Phantom (http://wearephantom.com/), e é bem provável que não, você não está sozinho. O duo de Helsinki surgiu há pouco mais de três meses, mas o suficiente para já ter caído nas graças dos excelentes do The xx que postou o vídeo Scars, do EP Phantom, na sua página do Tumblr (http://xx-xx.co.uk/) . Em seguida, na quinta-feira passada (19/04), a Pitchfork deu um espaço na secção Reviews (http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/13488-scars/) para a dupla que se auto-define como pós-indie. Para quem não sabe, desde o final do ano passado The xx está preparando o seu segundo álbum e, nesse processo de produção, tem postado todas as inspirações e curtições na sua página. Mais sobre essa história aqui: (http://www.urgemag.com.br/wp-admin/post.php?post=7214&action=edit. Presente dos céus, acaso ou destino? Não importa o nome, a verdade é que o talento da dupla se destacou e agora, a sorte está lançada. A URGEmag foi atrás destes fantasmas finlandeses para desvendar alguns mistérios. Confere abaixo a entrevista e, logo em seguida, o deliciosamente arrepiante vídeo para Scars, cheio de efeitos carregados e vocal sinistramente sensual da fantasma Hanna Toivonen que, ao lado do fantasma Tommi Koskinen, formam o Phantom.
ENTREVISTA


URGE: No site de vocês diz que a banda é um “duo pós-indie“. Bem, quais são as propostas musicais e estéticas do Phantom? E quais são suas inspirações?


PHANTOM: Pós-indie como um gênero em si é mesmo interessante. Enquanto o indie refere-se sobre gostar de bandas que não são bem conhecidas, o pós-indie refere-se a gostar de bandas, independentemente do quão popular elas sejam. Trata-se realmente de gostar da música e não se preocupar com as opiniões de outras pessoas. Esse conceito é também sobre tudo o que o Phatom é. Sobre encontrar a coragem para se expressar. Ser um fantasma dos seus próprios sonhos. Um super-herói da sua própria espécie. Principalmente para você mesmo. Para realizar o desejo, fazer o fantasma em cada um de nós, feliz. Quando as pessoas escondem esses fantasmas, elas se tornam miseráveis ??e fazem coisas estúpidas. A música “Scars” é também sobre isso. “A beleza está em suas cicatrizes”. Todos nós temos cicatrizes, mas elas não são falhas, elas são do aprendizado, de encontrar a nossa própria história, encontrar os nossos fantasmas. E não devemos tentar escondê-los. Citando um homem inspirado: “O mundo é um palco onde caminhamos. Estamos todos de uma maneira personagens de ficção que escrevemos nós mesmos com as nossas crenças. “ Louis Theroux (*).
Hanna: Eu sou inspirada por muitas coisas. Principalmente a vida simplesmente. Todas as pessoas magníficas que eu me encontro, as suas histórias, o que aprenderam, as suas cicatrizes. As pessoas são feitas para sobreviver. Eu também sou inspirada pela poesia (recentemente Pablo Neruda e EE Cummings), a mecânica quântica, a natureza, a honestidade, memórias, arte, curtas-metragens, documentários, fotografia e jazz antigo, país e bossa nova , junto com todos os grandes nomes.
Tommi: Recentemente eu fui inspirado por um amor na minha vida. Também a arte, boa música e natureza são coisas inspiradoras.

(*) Jornalista e apresentador que inovou nas minisséries da BBC com o seu estilão faux-naif.


URGE: Vocês “nasceram” em janeiro de 2012 e já caíram nas boas graças do The xx. O que isso significa para vocês que têm apenas quatro meses de estrada?


PHANTOM: A gente não estava esperando algo assim acontecer. E tão rápido. Está sendo além dos nossos sonhos. Nós somos tão gratos ao The xx e à Pitchfork. E, claro, a todo o grande feedback do povo, a cada pessoa. Uau! Não há palavras para isso. E a gente está apenas aquecendo e começando.


URGE: E vocês sabem como o The xx tomou conhecimento do vídeo para a canção Scare?

PHANTOM: Não temos ideia. Poderia ser do blog jajajamusic (*) que postou o vídeo no mesmo dia?

(*) http://www.jajajamusic.com/


URGE: Vamos falar agora de influências musicais. Quais as de vocês e quais bandas vocês gostam e, sejam sinceros, The xx está na sua lista de bandas favoritas?

Hanna: Eu escuto um monte de coisas diferentes. Atualmente tocam na minha playlist: M83, Regina Spektor, The xx, Bon Iver, Arcade Fire, The Naked and Famous, James Blake, Gold Panda, Mumford & Sons, Eddie Vedder e Bill Evans
Tommi: Sim, Gold Panda e James Blake, Röyksopp, Trentemøller, Washed Out, Jesse Somfay.


URGE: Falem um pouco sobre a participação de vocês no SXSW 2012.

PHANTOM: Foi uma loucura. O evento é uma loucura. No sentido muito bom. Nós fizemos cinco shows no total, em lugares underground. Nunca vamos esquecer isso. E todos os shows que fomos ver. Ahhh. O povo. As histórias. Hanna escreveu quatro músicas lá. Pura inspiração.

URGE: E sobre o nome da banda. Como surgiu? Tem alguma coisa a ver com o personagem de Lee Falk, O Fantasma (1936), ou é uma história diferente?

PHANTOM: Vamos deixar que as pessoas descubram isso (risos).

URGE: E quais são os planos a partir de agora?

PHANTOM: A gente está sendo contactado pelo mundo todo. Estamos fazendo novas músicas juntos para lançar um álbum completo, esperamos que no final do verão. Vamos gravar novos vídeos e promos e também fazer alguns shows.

URGE: Fiquem à vontade para mandar o seu recado.

PHANTOM: Nós nunca fomos ao Brasil, esperamos que possamos chegar aí em breve! A Finlândia é muito fria… - URGEmag

Label: unsigned
Released: available now
Contact: Band: Phantom
We say: After only eight months together Finnish duo Phantom have picked up 80k YouTube views and impressed The XX with this eloquent slice of contemporary trip hop. Their home video for Scars - made with an XBox Kinect - is a great example of how an idea is of greater value than a budget. The visual masterpiece has been stuck on repeat since we saw them play Helsinki's Flow Festival last weekend (full festival feature in next week's magazine) and out of the 950+ likes on YouTube there is only a solitary dislike. Just three months into their formation they launched this single with a performance at SXSW and have quickly established themselves as a tastemaker tip, with support from a mass of blogs including Ja Ja Ja, which acted as a catalyst for the blogosphere as the track spread the world over. Hanna Toivonen's sulty jazz inspired vocals and Tommi Koskinen original handmade MIDI theremin (AKA UFO) will no doubt lead to comparisons of electronic pioneers Massive Attack, easy listening elements of Zero 7 and the minimalism of The XX themselves. Although it's very early days, these two Finnish creatives are making all the right steps to carve a distinct career of their own. Video.

London Gig: September 27, JaJaJa Club, The Lexington N1 - Record of The Day

In courtesy of our 13th live session here at NFOP, we got a hold the exciting new Helsinki duo Phantom aka Tommi Koskinen and Hanna Toivonen, whom I met up with in their friends’ apartment located in Berlin’s Neukölln, shortly after their live appearance at Finnish Wave Night back in May. Having received a fairly successful amount of hype around their single “Scars” earlier this year, Phantom is one of my very personal excitements of 2012, and definitely a name we will hear more of in 2013. Let your mind get lost in the strange but beautiful universe of Phantom below, featuring the very first (stripped-down) recording of their new track “Albuquerque”. - No Fear of Pop

JIM CARROLL

Here are the latest New Music selections from the On The Record column in tomorrow’s edition of The Ticket. Please feel free to share tips below or check out all past New Music selections here.

While Tommi Koskinen and Hanna Toivonen had form in a couple of other Finnish acts, it’s their collaboration as Phantom which have causing all the wows. Their free-to-download “Scars EP” is a good place to go in search of their gorgeous, slo-mo, soulful indietronica and to find out why the likes of The xx are already fans. - The Irish Times - On The Record

Kansainvälistä huomiota kerännyt kotimainen elektropopyhtye Phantom on syksyn ensimmäisen Radio Helsinki -klubin live-esiintyjä. Ravintola Kuudennella Linjalla perjantaina syyskuun 7. päivä esiintyvän duon tummanpuhuvaan soundiin ovat ehtineet ihastua sekä brittiläinen The XX-yhtye että lukuiset ulkomaiset mediat.
Illan levymusiikista vastaavat Radio Helsingin dj:t Nick Triani, Harvest ja Marko Makelove. Nick Triani on Englannista Suomeen muuttanut tuottaja ja Soliti -levy-yhtiön pomo, joka tekee indiepainotteista 8 ½ -ohjelmaansa Radio Helsingin taajuudella. Harvest on pitkään Helsingin yöelämässä vaikuttanut dj, jonka levyvalintoja kuullaan Radio Helsingin Lauantaidisko-ohjelmassa. Marko Makelove tekee Uusi Aalto -ohjelmaa Radio Helsinkiin ja on toiminut dj:nä ja promoottorina lukuisissa Helsingin indieklubeissa viimeisen vuosikymmenen aikana.
Radio Helsinki klubi perjantaina 7.9. Kuudennella Linjalla klo 22-04. Liput 8 euroa.
Vuoden alussa perustettu Phantom julkaisi keväällä neljän biisin debyytti-ep:nsä, jolta löytyy myös duon tähän mennessä suurin hitti Scars. Duon muodostavat Hanna Toivonen ja Tommi Koskinen. Yhtyeen luomaa äänimaailmaa on kuvailtu 2000-luvulle päivitetyksi versioksi muutaman vuosikymmenen takaisesta trip hop -soundista. Yhtyettä onkin verrattu kyseisen genren suuruuksiin kuten Portisheadiin ja Massive Attackiin. The XX-yhtye nosti Phantomin Scars-videon esiin blogissaan. Lisäksi Phantom on huomioitu vaikutusvaltaisen musiikkimedian Pitchforkin sivuilla.
Phantom on kuluvan vuoden aikana ennättänyt vierailla myös South by Southwest -festivaaleilla. Livenä yhtye on kerännyt kiitosta näyttävistä visuaaleistaan, etenkin tämän kesän Flow -festivaaleilla ja Berliinissä järjestetyssä Finnish Wave Night -tapahtumassa.
Illan järjestää yhteistyössä Radio Helsingin kanssa SOL-olut.
”Although it’s very early days, these two Finnish creatives are making all the right steps to carve a distinct career of their own.” -Record Of The Day
”Phantom flirts with the moody and catchy pop genre in a slight Swedish spirit, and man do we love what we hear.” -Ja Ja Ja
”Like trip-hop for the Internet era.” -Chart Attack
”The next big thing out of Helsinki.” -Glue - Radio Helsinki

It's hard to get on a startup job-board these days without seeing an advertisement for a "rock-star" coder, but the founders of two Helsinki-based startups have taken it to another level. Tommi Koskinen of AudioDraft and Hanna Toivonen of Mukava Music have teamed up to create Phantom, a duo with crisp vocals and a dark electronic sound. The band has now been on stage at SXSW and released its first four track EP on Soundcloud.

Perhaps their most polished track, Scars, started immediately picking up traction after being featured on The XX's Tumblr on Wednesday, leading to a review from Pitchfork and several other music blogs last night. Scars' music video now has around 29 000 views on youtube, and 5 000 plays on Soundcloud, with most hits coming in the last day or so.
Koskinen and Toivonen met each other at Aalto University's Summer of Startups. During the program they first began talking about their music focused startups, then after they discovered they were both into similar music they though it would be fun if they did something together. That summer resulted in one track, but as they focused on building their respective businesses they found they didn't have the time to get together regularly.

Things picked up again when Toivonen was invited to South By Southwest by the Finnish Mobile Association to be sort of the house band for them and the Center of Entrepeneurship. To go with her, she figured Koskinen was a great choice because he was an entrepreneur as well, and it would be fun to do something for the conference.

At the time of the invitation they had six weeks until they performed, with only one old song down and three more to put together. They were able to quickly get three more tracks released, as well as put together the music video with a 3D Kinect visualization by Delicode Ltd and Studio Lumikuu.

At SXSW they were apparently supposed to play only one set, but somehow it ended up being five due to the response they got from the crowd. One head-turner was Koskinen's MIDI transmitter and theremin, which basically allows you to play music like a wizard. "We made them smile, we made them laugh, and we touched people as well," says Koskinen. "It's important to get people emotionally involved."

Right now Toivonen tells ArcticStartup that they're both extremely busy with their startups, but they're still putting new songs together. They want to get four more songs together to do another album, as well as to do some gigs. They should have a surprise gig posted on their Facebook page sometime soon, and this summer they'll be playing at the MLove festival in Berlin.

In more startup-focused news, AudioDraft is now crowdsourcing music for startups like Scoopshot and Grand Cru, as well as taking submissions for the next new Nokia Ringtones. Crowdsourcing music content looks like it has a lot of interesting applications to take advantage of, and AudioDraft seems to be really picking up. I had to ask if any part of the album was croudsourced, but Toivonen assures me "it was all Tommi."

You may not have heard of Mukava Music before, but today they announced they have received €300 000 seed funding from Sibelius Academy and Tekes, making this Sibelius' first commercial investment project ever.

Mukava Music is still in private alpha right now, and is creating an intelligent service for music discovery while also innovating on the music streaming business model to take better care of artists. The details are still scarce right now, but Toivonen says the last couple days with Phantom proves both sharing is caring, and there is power in the people. - The Arctic Startup

We don’t know much about Phantom, aside from the fact that they are a newly formed electronic duo from Helsinki. They’ve an EP which they released about a month ago titled Scars and you can stream the entire EP below. We’ve also embdedded the music video for the main track for your viewing pleasures. - Hotshit

Last weekend we met the lovely people around the Finnish band Phantom for a very late breakfast with eggs, banana bread and goat cheese all over the place. We spoke about high-fives, airplanes, no make-up and being Finnish. Also a lot of technical details were explained about the UFO and the Kinect visuals, something I will not bore the PonyDanceClyde readers with (though they are interesting). Afterwards we went for a little stroll and took a few silly pictures. Check out our album on Facebook for more!

PDC: So… Let’s start with your story, how did you meet?
Hanna: We met at a co-working space in Espoo, Finland, called Aalto Venture Garage. I was in the summer start-ups programme and Tommi was sitting there drinking a coffee and working on his laptop. Then my coach said: “Hey that’s Tommi from AudioDraft, you should go talk to him”. We probably talked for about 15 minutes about real stuff and then we just started talking about bands we like. We were like NOISIA! Fuck yeah! High-five! I remember that.

PDC: What about the companies you started up?
Tommi: I am a co-founder of AudioDraft, which actually already started up in 2009. It is about crowdsourcing music and sound design from a huge global user community. So for example, a film studio or game company can go the website and leave an assignment and then the designers can compete for the work.
Hanna: Mine is a bit newer, I am a co-founder of the Mukava Music project and we started last summer. It’s a geo-located music discovery service where you can intelligently discover new music. So it will recommend you new music based on your activity in social media. You can also see what is being listened to in the whole world, for example in a certain street in Berlin.

PDC: How did you decide to make music together? Hanna has a jazz background and Tommi electro, how did you think of mixing those?
Hanna: I was actually really interested in the electro scene and I wanted to learn how to produce, so I asked Tommi if he could teach me something. Haha! That’s how it started.
Tommi: Yeah, we actually didn’t get into that, but we produced some tracks in the late summer of 2011 and one if them is now on the Scars EP. We didn’t have any time to keep on working on that during the fall, until Hanna called me in December that there was a chance to have a gig at SXSW.
Hanna: I was actually supposed to go to SXSW with my jazz EP, but then I went to Australia and composed Scars in an airplane. And when it was finished I thought: Shit… his is not jazz. Haha! So I called Tommi and I said: “wanna go to Texas?”

PDC: You just started less than 6 months ago and things seem to have gone pretty quickly for you. How do you think that happened?
Tommi: A lot of random things. After releasing the Scars EP we had a few successful shows at SXSW and we made the video for Scars. After that it seemed to fade out, because we didn’t have a lot of time. Until Ja Ja Ja Music blogged about us and 2 days after The xx posted our video. Then we got featured on Pitchfork and once something is out on Pitchfork, it’s everywhere. Then we realised there was some potential.

PDC: Tell us more about the magical UFO! How did that start? What are your future plans with it?
Tommi: It started as my solo project at the university of arts and design. I wanted to create a device that actually helps me perform my music. I had been doing a lot of gigs with Kitkaliitto, my other band, and mostly it’s turning knobs and pushing pads and it gets kind of geeky. You want to do something more than that. So I wanted to create a device I could perform with – grandly. I am planning to make a next version of it soon to develop it further, re-tune and re-fine it. A lot of people have been asking about it and so I think it has lot of commercial potential, but for now it’s just for us.

PDC: Technology seems to have a big part in Phantom. You also have a live Kinect-VJ on stage with you, Julius. How did this happen?
Hanna: Again we met at Venture Garage, we had a meeting about SXSW and Julius had heard the Scars draft.
Julius: Yes, I knew I was going there as well and I have a little company called Delicode that works with the Kinect. We do a lot of experimental stuff, but it worked out to be a real program and because it is in real-time I thought it would enhance the show.
Tommi: Actually if we wouldn’t have these different elements and it would be just me geeking on the laptop and Hanna singing… it would be kind of a boring show.
Hanna: Yes and in the future the Kinect visuals will probably be hand gestured, so I can control them.
Julius: And maybe even by the crowd, who knows!
Hanna: Also I think it’s pretty cool that our video was made with an xBox Kinect camera in 4 hours in some storage room. I actually had a really high fever and wasn’t wearing any make-up, but luckily you can’t see any of that.

PDC: Tell us about the music scene in Finland.
Hanna: I think it is kind of fragmented. A lot of musicians are afraid to bring out their music, or they don’t know how to use the internet that well. About 80% of the published music is in Finnish and they are still going from label to label giving out demos. As an artist you want to reach your audience at the right moment and people think they need someone else to do this for them, but you don’t.
Tommi: Thinking of the right channels can be quite challenging. I know so many bands with great music and also good videos, yet they still aren’t discovered.
Julius: I think the difference between these guys and your average Finnish bands is the fact that Hanna and Tommi both know social media so well.

PDC: So far you’ve only released one EP. Can we expect an album any time soon?
Hanna: Uhm… yes… First we’re gonna release an 7? with Scars and then we will be working on a long play this summer… so you’ll see!
Tommi: Yes. It’s coming out when it’s done.
Hanna: Haha! Yes! That is such a Finnish thing to say.

Kiitos Phantom! It was lovely to meet you guys and I wish you all the best in the future! Pony readers: if you have a chance to see a live show of these guys, I recommend you to take it! - PonyDanceClyde

Chances are that you already watch this video on any other blog, but it is so cool that I can’t help posting it myself. Electric duo Phantom were formed a few months ago, but they are quickly positioning itself as the next big thing out of Helsinki thanks to a fashionable image and an attractive video debuted at SXSW. Musically, Scars is moody pop song of intriguing textures with a jazzy twist. Watch the video below and do not forget to check the whole EP on the band’s soundcloud. - Glue

Here’s why you should have Tumblr. Thanks to a posting from the xx, we’ve been turned on to the video for “Scars” from Phantom, an ethereal electro project that sounds like a second nephew of Massive Attack and Portishead.

Like a less spastic but suitably melancholic sequel to Radiohead’s “House of Cards,” “Scars” has the contours of two people animated using “3D Kinecy Visualization,” turning them into walking Joy Division LP covers. The line-people sing and strike poses as their forms bubble with static shocks as the song progresses, like trip-hop for the Internet era. The production is crisp and mechanic, but never cold, thanks in no small part to vocalist Hanna Toivonen’s powerfully soulful voice.

Click here to listen to the band’s Scars EP on Soundcloud. - ChartAttack

Helsinki electronic duo Phantom are a very new band-- as in, they formed at the beginning of this year (according to their bio, anyway). They have one EP to their name, Scars (listen to it here); the xx recently posted up the video for this title track on their Tumblr. Check out the eerie, effects-laden clip here.
Phantom: "Scars" (via SoundCloud) - Pitchfork

- - The XX Soundboard

SXSW Music Conference kicks off! I headed to the STUBBS BAR party to catch Kasabian & Miike Snow headliners. - The English Gentleman

The UFO a Midi controlling theremin, built… for a school project. - RVSX TV

here were plenty of strange creations that mixed music with technology at the South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. NY1's Technology reporter Adam Balkin filed the following report.
When you get music and technology together at festivals like SXSW, it shouldn't be surprising that new musical tech offspring emerges.

The so-called UFO, seen above, is a device created by an electronic music band called Phantom out of Finland. It allows the user to control virtually any sound by moving hands around these sensors and the distance from the sensors actually alters the pitch.

"You can control it with your laptop and you just kind of play air guitar but sort of real," says Hanna Toivonen of Phantom.

Liquipel has developed a nanotechnology coating for making any piece of electronics completely waterproof and it is now applied to Blue microphones, protecting them from salivating singers, in more ways than one.

"It doesn't allow the bacteria to stick to the microphone. So if someone is sick, they have strep, they're singing on that microphone, the next person who grabs that mic they have a good possibility of catching whatever germs are on the mic," says Sam Winkler of Liquipel. "Now with Liquipel's nanotechnology and anti-bacterial technology, basically the germs will not stick to the device."

Literally switching gears for a bit, there is now a bicycle that allows riders to switch gears using just their minds. The Prius Concept bike devised by Saatchi LA as a marketing tool for Toyota. Through headgear full of brainwave-reading sensors, which can be built into a helmet, riders can change gears via an iPhone controller.

Eventually, changing gears with brainwaves will be easier than doing it with a twist with the hand.

"As technology as we become more used to it, these different types of interfaces, it'll be just subconscious 100 years from now," says Patrick Miller of Deeplocal. "We'll say, 'Wow, that's weird, they're using their hands for this.' Makes so much sense just to think about these things."

More near-future applications of the technology, though, include the possibility of allowing people who have lost use of their limbs to become more independent. - NY1

We’ve got some more Finnish goodness for yours truly from the rising pop capital Helsinki today, this time of the newly emerging electronic duo Phantom, another project of Kitkalittoo‘s Tommi Koskinen, of whom we also covered a few weeks ago. Where Kitakaliittoo could surprise us with emerging into a free jazz-esque, dark electronic sound, Phantom flirts with the moody and catchy pop genre in a slight Swedish spirit, and man do we love what we hear. Watch the splendid video for ‘Scars’ visualized by Delicode Ltd / Studio Lumikuu below, and don’t forget to snatch a free download of their EP Scars via Soundcloud. - JaJaJa