Wow, a VERY cool show put on by the fine folks at Time Lag Records.  Kemialliset Ystävät is a band/project from Finland that I had had the good luck to see at Terrastock 6. Yes, it was a short set,  but the intensity was at full tilt from the first song (and a short set allowed my 2 hour ride home to end at a somewhat reasonable time!).  Although lumped in with the 'free-folk' movement, I'd say these guys were pretty unclassifiable, other than being extremely psychedelic.  They had lots of electronics going on as well as the traditional instrumentation.  Below is some video I took of the band, the encore to be precise...Should give you a good idea of what the experience was like...Finland truly has one of the best music scenes going right now, and  Kemialliset Ystävät is definitely one of the most interesting of that lot.

Opening for Kemialliset Ystävät were Portland favorites Cursillistas.  This is the first time I've seen this project with a full band and I enjoyed them very much (as did the audience).  Cursillistas is the project of L'Animaux Tryst Recordings founder Matt Lajoie, and is one of the most interesting things happening in Maine right now.  Below is one of the songs the full band performed...I hope you like it!!!

Finally, between Cursillistas & Kemialliset Ystävät, the band Skaters played...actually, it was just one guy with his back to the audience...however, he put up a really neat wall of psychedelic drone/noise that seemed to end WAY too quickly.  I didn't get any video of Skaters, as looking at someone's back for a few minutes probably wasn't too interesting unless you were there :) 

A fun evening, and a special thanks to Nemo over at Time-Lag records (who now has a ROCKING store in downtown Portland) for putting this cool event on...

qq23 Posted 6/3/08