These days, there’s a Week every other week. Most prominent are Art Week, Fashion Week, Design Week – the tricolore ice cream of creative industry PR. Square, heavily branded, and bland in three different ways. Could this be any different?
Wednesday, 13 May
Even before my arrival at Helsinki Music Week (HMW), I’d already been mistaken for a Finn twice, addressed in the distinctly esoteric, clip-clop lyricism only the Suomi language can verbalize. First stop on my stacked itinerary: dinner in a former tar shed on a “hidden island.” We’re around eight “VIPs” plus our lovely host, Martta Louekari, making conversation, awkwardly at first, on this large granite rock in the Baltic Sea. A few glasses in and things get more interesting. I’m told that, in the Finnish language, one can can write a poem in a single word. Our meal is served to a live set by Lasse Pietiläinen and Aapo Tapio Soulanto, flute-meets-synthesizer ambient. Me and my new entourage hop in a Sprinter van, dressed seats-to-roof in tangerine, herringbone-stitched leather cushions. “I feel like Kim Kardashian,” I say to break the strained silence.
We arrive at what we were told is a church, but which, depending on the angle, looks like a crash-landed saucer or a bougie outdoor bouldering gym. Inside Temppeliaukion kirkko, a 24-by-24-meter copper disc covers most of the ceiling, while thick granite walls surround the unlikely parish hall. I meet my friend, HMW co-founder Pau Kraus, who escorts me to the “nice seats.” Sitting down and looking up, I notice the rain gently tapping on the windows above, in rhythm with the first song by Finnish art-pop enigma Erika Sirola (vocals) and DJ-composer Murrettumeri (organ). It feels ceremonial. Sirola pulls out a kantele, a traditional Finnish plucked string instrument; basically, a tiny harp. They start playing an unreleased song of theirs called “Below the Apple Trees,” then stop. Complete silence, besides the subtle precipitation. The rain intensifies as she slowly starts to sing “Pure Imagination,” written for Gene Wilder in the OG Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory film, from 1971. Goosebumps. It’s like they’d creatively-directed the clouds to pour rain in tune to this soulful organ rendition. My friend sheds a tear, we go for a smoke. French composer Malibu closes the night with an ethereal forestscape-thunderstorm-strobe-lights live set. When the bass drones, you feel the room vibrate between the thick granite walls, below the enormous disc. I skip the afterparty like a good choirboy.
[Erika Sirola and Murrettumeri performs at Helsinki Music Week, 2026. Video: Otto Väisänen]
Thursday, 14 May
I walk to the Finnkino Maxim for the HMW Talks. The milieu is Scandi-idyll with East Bloc flair. Or lack thereof. I arrive early, grab some popcorn, and reconvene with the squad. The seats are red velvet plush – very, perhaps too, comfortable for a discourse program. Phillip Pyle, digital editor at 032c, moderates. The first talk is with artist Ewa Poniatowska, of nomadic performance platform RSVP and the audiovisual duo Rat Section: “durational performance piece,” “time-based media,” “writing vs. seeing” … The next panel, “Geography of Decay,” saw a gallerist (Leevi Toija), a seemingly stoned curator (Jonne Väisänen), and Varg²™ (aka Jonas Rönnberg, the architect of Sweden’s most volatile electronic exports) walk into a cinema. It departs from “HP #1,” a fanzine-turned-art-show by Varg²™ and his Cease2Exist collective at sunnyside, a local non-profit exhibition space founded last year by Toija and three others. The energy is refreshingly sincere. TL;DR: they claim subculture is dead, knocked out by Covid with the physical spaces where it came together, and that the “boardrooms of opportunity” have become harder to infiltrate.
Then a young fella, clearly on some sort of mission, squats right in front of me. He’s wearing ripped washed jeans with a lot of zippers, a graphic band tee, two large chains – one with black beads, another with a large, iced-out cross – and a Gucci scarf. I’m sitting in the front row, which means he’s roughly two steps away from the panelists. Odd, but fair – maybe this is how he likes to hang out? Suddenly, he yells “When are you taking questions from the audience?! I have something to say, and I’m in a hurry.” He asks for a mic, but is denied – the panelists can hear him just fine. He looks at Varg²™. “Why are you charging money for your shows this weekend? You’re rich, look at you wearing all this Gucci” (never mind that he’s wearing the exact same scarf). “I make music too, you know. You’re not special.” Varg²™ is clearly ready to throw down, but also curious to hear the guy out. “Let’s hear your music, then.” “Is there an AUX? Give me an AUX!” the heckler demands. There’s none, but a girl from the crowd shouts, “Play it into the mic!” He starts playing the song, a pop-trap-rap hybrid, from his iPhone speaker into the mic, intermittently jumping and “singing” the lyrics. The whole room is flabbergasted. After about forty-five seconds, he tosses the mic to the side, flips off the panelists saying “FUCK Y’ALL,” and leaves. Varg²™ tells the organizers to get his phone number. He wants him to perform with the next night. Perhaps this is what it takes to make it in music (and to keep a panel on its toes)?
The Helsinki heckler, sanctioned screenshot of unsanctioned video capture
The final talk, having to follow this red-pilled moment, is a lecture by culture-music writer, and Zoomer expert, Kieran Press-Reynolds about his Spike essay “Shitpostmodernism.” A sharp and timely walkthrough of slop-trigger algorithms, online conspiracies, phonk music in aura-farming compilations, what it all means. After the incident, it was hard to argue that something wasn’t brewing in the audience’s collective unconscious and that some were simply fed up. Stomach growling, I feel like I was part of a durational performance.
We round out the night with a show by MELO, “an eclectic trailblazer of Finnish rap.” He has a large plastic horse on stage. The crowd is young, but only momentarily lit. No mosh pits? His music is a Finnish intersection of 2010’s EDM, Soundcloud rap and post-rage hyper pop, his swag is The Dare.
Friday, 15 May
As I sit down for breakfast in my fancy hotel, I realize I have my boobs out (wearing my Aphex Twin “Windowlicker” print tee). At sunnyside, we’re met by Rönnberg and Toija, who speak of punk sensibilities. The wooden plaques used for the exhibition were stolen from a nearby construction site, a gold bolt latch from the bathrooms at Helsinki City Hall. The rest was made on a 2012 Canon 4235i office printer, now hidden behind the artworks, which are basically a zine duct taped a wall. Collages of old arrest orders, drug paraphernalia, vintage porn, most of all graffiti. There are contributions by South London noise-pop artist Klein and Polish post-net painter Mateusz Sarzynski, as well as a tribute to the late, pioneering Finnish electronic musician Mika Vainio. Whose birthday is today, 15 May. The conversation, especially following yesterday’s episode with the heckler, felt productive, and similarly cathartic. Music, painting, artistic production – the less pre-meditated, the realer. “It’s like Waterworld, you’re floating around with a jar of just a little bit of sand,” Rönnberg says. Artists should “stop cosplaying like they don’t have a butthole.”
Views of Varg²™ (Cease2Exist), “HP #1,” sunnyside, Helsinki, 2026. Photo: Leevi Toija
Courtesy: the artists and sunnyside, Helsinki. Photo: Leevi Toija
Photo: Leevi Toija
Next up is Kulttuurisauna, a minimalist oak wood meets raw concrete sauna on the Helsinki waterfront, hosted by Pekka Airaxin of Infra, a Helsinki-based label. It’s serene – Friday evenings, the shifts are silent. “Loved the drippage” says one of my US-American press-mates. Afterwards, I walk to the Helsinki Cathedral, a city-landmark house of god transformed, tonight, to a house of maniacal music²™. Dualspines, a lore-ridden Scouse producer thought to be the rapper EsDeeKid (provided it’s not Timothée Chalamet), plays a mix of “4 Raws” (2025) and the title theme from Twin Peaks (1990–91/2017). Immaculate. Then, an array of gonky, hyper-pop tracks with subtle organ interludes and butchered transitions. He is not wearing headphones. Have these walls of worship ever felt 300 bpm? Up next is Klein, who, as a screenshot I later receive puts it, “seemingly unhappy with being a critically acclaimed experimental musician, punishes the crowd with Really Loud Noises” (a quip later claimed as an Insta story by Helsinki musician Alsa Ojala, who makes music as Keiska). VS-55, another of Rönnberg’s projects, then proceeds to play a more church-appropriate set. Swirling, swiveled organ, massive, guttural sub-bass with ASMR vocals, no-tune acoustic guitar. Elegant but eerie – enough to make any atheist at least agnostic.
It’s also two hours – minus points for taking time off the last performance of the night, by the British folk-angel Joanne Robertson. Following the three others, her presence and musicality are especially soothing. She speaks to the crowd on several occasions; she cut her finger last week. People can’t seem to hear her very well and are perplexed. After the show, she tells me and my friend that she’d rather clean her apartment than play live jazz. Aura.
[Joanne Robertson performs at Helsinki Music Week, 2026. Video: Rasmus Purola]
We arrive at Ääniwalli for the afterparty, sadly just after a set by Crystallmess (subject of an artist portrait in Spike #84 – “Vulgarity”) has ended. Varg²™, now DJ, is playing 808-heavy mixes of trap-pop-dubstep with a dash of Drain Gang – the cult favourite Swedish cloud rap collective. It’s the kind of hodgepodge soundtrack that removes any apprehension from the dance floor. He ends his set with an extended interlude cut of Dutch EDM duo Showtek’s generational track “FTS” (2010); I Live For Hardstyle Baby. Eighteen-year-old London rap star and Varg²™ prodigy TeeboFG takes the stage, and the energy level reaches its apex. Helsinki youth in shambles. The next set is by Australian DJ jamesjamesjames, flag bearer for a new generation of EDM producers, whose back is tattooed, neck to waist, with the entire tracklist of Ministry of Sound’s Clubbers Guide to 2011, topped with “R.I.P Avicii.” His set, a mix of Ibiza theme songs and tingly avant-pop, very much honored that vibe. Backstage, I meet Dualspines, who, I can confirm, is not EsDeeKid. “But are we sure that he is, in fact Dualspines?” my friend asks afterwards. The last set is the debut outing of swedm®, another Rönnberg-led collective – his third and final show, this time featuring dubstep mixes and records by Thaiboy Digital. Up to this point, it really has been Varg²™ Music Week. But I’m not complaining.
Saturday, 16 May
The next day, I catch up with my friends outside a foodcourt in the sun. I order a lavish plate of large tiger prawns, three in the shell, plus rice, chilis, lime, and a sauce on the side. As a Dane with roots on Jutland’s northwest coast, there’s something about peeling crustaceans, shrimp in particular, that fires synapses in a special place in my brain. The trick is to twist off the head right above the meat, then crack the shell in at least three places, in the exoskeleton’s weakest links. Twist again, slightly, and pull at each end. Voilà.
Really big shrimps, Helsinki, 2026. Photo: the author
I leave in a rush, realizing I’m late to see Finnish ambient musician Romantic Relic and Berlin-based audiovisual artist bod [包家巷], and arrive two minutes after they finish performing. Bummer. My friend, who says it was amazing, introduces me to the duo backstage. Nicholas Zhu tells me they’re playing a live set as bod [包家巷] at OXI, a club in Berlin, on 29 May, which just so happens to be my birthday. A silver lining.
Still in Helsinki, local prodigy Glayden gives a high-octane performance. He has a really nice guitar standing by his side that he almost plays. The Finnish mode of music seems to be all modes at once, its new vanguard cataloging influences spanning Swedish House Mafia, the DJ-trio; Dean Blunt, the Babyfather of British art pop; and Spaceghost Purpp, the Miami-bred trap pioneer. EDM is a common denominator. Miss Kittin gives an electroclash masterclass, to a half-empty, stale-energy main stage. On the mic, she should’ve been on the more intimate floor next door, playing in the crowd. Tiga & Zyntherius’s “Sunglasses at Night” (2001) turns out to be a great sing-along.
[Romantic Relic and bod [包家巷] perform at Helsinki Music Week, 2026. Video: Pau Kraus]
Backstage, I engage in an extended conversation about looksmaxxing, Epstein island and the stretched image. “Who will be the first to make a 9:16 feature film?” I ask. One guy says Harmony Korine probably already has one in the works. Feeling drained, I have a Battery Spritz (from a local energy-drink sponsor whose products I have steered clear of all week) during Mechatok. I’m so back. The German producer, DJ, and Drain Gang affiliate also almost plays a cool-looking guitar, and has the crowd in the palm of his hand – especially when his two recent hits, “MAKKA” and “Expression on Your Face” (both 2025), grace the sound system. I’m reaching my limit of being fun and gregarious, but rally for Danny L Harle, hyper-pop pioneer and festival closer. Hoping for a stranger set, something to shake me up, I bail. Straight to bed.
Sunday, 17 May
The following morning, driving to the airport, I think about the Week and how big of a contrast this Helsinki music event has been. The city’s youth have the kind of resurrected DIY punk spirit that, I suppose, flourishes in a place that’s often off the touring circuits of more IYKYK artists. If you want music, culture, and discourse, you gotta make it happen yourself. Fuck the tricolore, invent your own fourth flavor. I’ll be back next year.
MELO performs at Helsinki Music Week, 2026. Photo: Niklas Hampinen
Kulttuurisauna, Helsinki, 2026. Photo: Niklas Hampinen
Glayden performs at Helsinki Music Week, 2026. Photo: Niklas Hampinen
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Helsinki Music Week
13-17 May 2026