Tune Up - Music Touring Across Scotland

Kiila

This will be the first ever UK tour by Kiila, a collective based in Turku, Finland. Kiila typify the exciting new wave of music coming out of Finland in recent years, typified by the output of the label Fonal.

Kiila released their 3rd album Tuota Tuota in June 2009 and, in the words of Dusted Magazine: "Kiila's greatest coup is shoehorning genuine song craft into this mix without upsetting the balance. (For example) album opener, Viisi Hirvasta. For its first half it's a hypnotizing instrumental built from plangent strings, stray percussion, and a recurring melody on the bass, until a half-chanted/half-sung passage emerges near its conclusion, making you wonder if it started life as a song, a poem or a jam. Tuota Tuota is full of moments like these, where you have to question how it is your listening, as all your usual hierarchies are upended and genres turned on their heads. That you at first don't quite realize Kiila is doing this is remarkable; that they make it seem so natural is even more so."

Though previous Kiila releases have featured tape collage, synths, turntables and more, its fair to say that Tuota Tuota comes across like their own skewed take on folk rock, albeit through psychedelic Finnish eyes. Kiila have been in existence for a decade or more now, and their various members are also active in other groundbreaking Finnish acts that have also achieved cult status in the UK and the US, including Kemialliset Ystavat, Islaja, Avarus and Shogun Kunitoki.

When this sextet take the stage, you may be taken aback by the driving rhythms, sublime vocal harmonies and casually virtuous multi-instrumentalism that follow. Often compared to like-minded US acts such as MV&EE and Espers, who have all found significant audiences in the UK and US, Killa are regarded by those who know them as at least as equally musically profound and influential but still to reap their much-deserved wider recognition.

This tour is produced by Newcastle-based promoters No-Fi, with the support of the Scottish Arts Council's Tune Up programme, Finnish organizations ESEK and LUSES, and AV10 Festival.