Its been amazing eighteen years since me and my friends started organizing illegal raves in the squat houses of Helsinki in early 90s. Most bizarre experience must have been DJing for Jean-Paul Gaultier and Helena Christensen at a Berlin fetish club Kit Kat after their first ever Berlin show. Most flashy ones have been entertaining the rich & famous of Hong Kong or Russia while warming up Chemical Brothers, Paul van Dyk or Underworld was something Ill never forget. From the venues Ive DJed Tresor in Berlin, Pacha in Ibiza, Panama in Amsterdam and CODE in Tokyo were special places to play.
My recording career started in 1998 with Slusnik Lunas Nicklas Renqvist. Unity was signed to british Steelfish label and found its way to Gatecrasher and Renaissance compilations. Sasha and Oakenfold opened their Essential Mixes with it and Pete Tong played it on BBC Radio 1. Gigs with DJ Tiesto lead into signing to his Black Hole label while other releases include Embrace on Five AM, Beautiful on Sential (finnish national singles chart #1) and the Andy Moor collab YearZero on Andys AVA label. My remixes include Aaltos Rush made together with Super8, Stage One remix made for Hooj Choons and more recently Way Out Wests Killa which started out as a bootleg.
As promoters we have come a very long way from the days of illegal warehouse raves. Together with my friends, we have run Club Unity for over ten years, promoted Renaissances events in Helsinki and organized events called Pacifique for almost 3000 people in a water park. We have had fun at 16 hour Sunday clubbing sessions at DTM and have brought Jose Padilla to Finland. We have organised events on boats, in parks, on ice-skating rinks and have also gone on a worldwide tour of Finland using a Helsinki city municipal bus. To me electronic music and club culture has always been about open-mindness, unity amongst people and pushing the musical boundaries forward, whether its ambient concert in a park or full on rave in warehouse. Uniting the sounds, the minds, the people