RinneRadio
RinneRadio |
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RinneRadio is a trio of musicians from Finland. Operating on the boundaries of jazz and electronic music, the output of RinneRadio has been described as "some jazz, plenty of techno and ambient influences, a few poppy melodies, and hints of world music" [1]. The biography on the band's website provides this description of the music they produce: "RinneRadio fuses electronic underground beats with progressive jazz. As the rhythms of drum’n’bass and hip hop are fermented with dark dub, lush ambient soundscapes and timeless soprano sax textures, the resulting brew becomes equal parts sexy trance jazz and surreal dance music." [2] RinneRadio currently consists of Tapani Rinne (reeds), Verneri Lumi (electronics), and Juusonik (percussion).
The band was formed in 1988 by saxophone player/reedsman and composer Tapani Rinne, who still leads the band.
Early history
The band was formed in 1988 by saxophone player/reedsman and composer Tapani Rinne, who still leads the band. Rinne participated in the composer and drummer Edvard Vesala's legendary Sound & Fury workshops in Helsinki and during these workshops the band started to form.
RinneRadio's eponymous debut album was released in 1988 and it featured a stellar cast of Finland's current jazz elite, Raoul Björkenheim and Iro Haarla to name a few.
The second album Dance and Visions was released in 1990 and the album featured the Sami yoik singer Wimme Saari for the first time in RinneRadio's history. Dance and Visions also introduced Jari Kokkonen as the member of RinneRadio. He continued in the group until 2001.
In 1992 RinneRadio outed the album Joik, where another long time collaborator of Rinne, Kimmo Kajasto appeared for the first time. The same year Tapani Rinne garnered the Finnish Yrjö award for Jazz Musician of the Year, given by the Finnish Jazz Federation.
The group's fourth album, Unik was released in 1994 which followed an EP titled DiorInNera, released in 1993. Unik received one of the highest record industry accolades in Finland, the Jazz Emma Award, which can be called the Finnish equivalent of Grammy. By this time, the word had got out of the new concoction of jazz, techno and ambient sounds played by RinneRadio and the band toured extensively in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Japan, Spain and Sweden.
The band's core group was now Rinne, Kajasto and Kokkkonen and this trio continued to develop the sound further during the next two releases, EP Joulu which featured new interpretations of famous Christmas carols and particularly RinneRadio's fifth album RoK (1996) . Their sound consisted of influences from hip hop, drum & bass and of course jazz, a style quite ahead of its time given the fact that rest of Europe was into acid jazz at the time.
In 1997 they released another EP, called pfft which was a collaboration with Pan Sonic's Mika Vainio and was based on their previous live remix project where Vainio remixed his version of RinneRadio's live show. In 1997 they also played a show at Knitting Factory in New York from where the audio signal was sent live to Finland and Pori Jazz Festival where DJ Spooky made a live interpretation of the concert for the festival audience.
After this, two more smaller releases, EP Osaka and single (music) Juju, were on the plate, before RinneRadio started to work on a new full-leght album, G. The album was released in 1998 and was important milestone because programming guru Kimmo Kajasto had been replaced with DJ Ken-One (aka Jean Johansson). Their collaborations with various DJ's culminated in the 1999 release B, which features RinneRadio tracks remixed by Finland's top DJ's and remixers, including Jori Hulkkonen, JS16 and (Producer & DJ).
2000-present
Work with Hulkkonen continued as he was largely responsible for the producing the next RinneRadio album, Nao, along with Veikka Erkola in 2001. Nao became the group's most commercially succesful album after RoK, reaching no. 32 on the Official Finnish Album Chart.
Discography
Albums
- RinneRadio (1988)
- Dance And Visions (1990)
- Joik (1992)
- Unik (1994)
- RoK (1996)
- pfft (1997)
- Osaka (1998)
- G (1998)
- B (1999)
- Nao (2001)
- Lumix (2003)
- Pan (2004)
- + (2006)