Ada Aik is the conceptual alter-ego of musician and composer Karin Mäkiranta. Her upcoming album 5 Hours of Light, produced with Jonas Verwijsen (Colin Stetson, Kings of Convenience), explores the connections between scent, memory, and sound, blending ethereal melodies with sensory experiences. For this special performance, Ada Aik collaborates with scent artist Salla Keskinen and a team of visual and performance artists to create an immersive concert experience that expands the boundaries of traditional live music.

To ensure the fullest sensory experience, we kindly ask the audience to attend scent-free.

In the early 1990s, English-Belgian DJ and producer CJ Bolland was instrumental in forging a global “acid rave sound.” Raised in Antwerp by parents who owned an underground club, Bolland was exposed to the possibilities of music from an early age. Both a mainstay at legendary clubs across Europe and prolific remixer—having released official remixes for Moby, Depeche Mode, and Tori Amos—Bolland’s influence expands well beyond the acid techno he is best known for.

DJ JVS is a familiar name to Helsinki’s night club regulars. As a community favorite and resident of Club Kaiku and Post Bar, few have directed dance floors across the city with such consistency over the past few years. A good-time-guarantee!

DJ Semitone is a contemporary music project based in Helsinki, blending elements of ambient, hip-hop, trance, and post-club sounds. Playful, lighthearted yet sincere, DJ Semitone often draws inspiration from cities, hope, pop culture and nostalgia, crafting an elegant sound that captures joy and melancholy with a hopeful undertone. With a raw go-with-the-feel approach at its core, DJ Semitone transforms real life’s moments into real life music.

Singer-songwriter, producer, and cellist Elusin once cited Laura Mulvey, the film theorist credited with coining “the male gaze,” as an inspiration of hers. That filmic influence is immediately clear upon listening to the Norwegian-American’s lush and noisy soundscapes, which alchemize distorted guitars, trap beats, and mystic vocals as if they are indispensable objects in a single mis-en-scene. With each project that she releases, whether her 2022 album SYNFUELS or past collaborations with Sematary and Taraneh, Elusin’s cinematic universe expands.

Erika de Casier has been flawlessly melding electronic and R&B since her debut 2021 album Essentials. While the Danish singer-songwriter and producer has certainly continued to pay homage to her 1990s and early 2000s musical influences, including Aaliyah and Destiny’s Child, over the years, her recent releases and production work have also highlighted the highly contemporary and genre-bending nature of her music. Whether it’s her electric club track with Nick Léon, “Bikini,” or her collaborations with K-Pop icons New Jeans, Dua Lipa, Blood Orange, and Shygirl in the past year alone, Casier’s sound is as hard enchanting as it is impossible to pin down. 

Exploited Body, the project of Helsinki-based artist Nori Kin, has significantly influenced the experimental music scene. They have worked with prominent acts like Bladee and Varg, notably contributing to tracks such as "Perfect Violation" and "冰冷" from the 2021 album Body Of Content. Their work spans releases on influential labels such as PAN, Posh Isolation, and Northern Electronics, with recent works like the 2024 EP Here, I Abandon continuing to offer fresh new perspectives on contemporary music.

The 20-year-old UK underground rapper Fakemink deemed himself “London’s Saviour” when he released his debut album of the same name in 2023. There’s reason to believe it—the rapidly rising rapper released over 50 tracks last year alone. While best known for his spin on jerk rap, Fakemink’s output, much like Dean Blunt, who he’s called the “best artist of all time,” is ultimately impossible to pin down by sheer nature of its size and variety.

Grande Mahogany is the alter ego of Finnish-Ghanaian guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, singer and producer Jesse Essel, who definitely sleeps with wah-wah pedals under his pillow. His debut album, As Grande As, blends elements of funk, alternative rock, afro-psychedelia, and R&B. The album has been praised for its originality and depth, and understandably so.

Her is an upcoming project by multi-platinum selling artist Aino Morko and her team of instrumentalists. Their debut performance will take place at Temppeliaukio Church, which was built directly out of solid rock and is known for its excellent acoustics and ambience. This kind of performance is exactly what Helsinki Music Week is about.

For nearly two decades, Finnish musician Jaakko Eino Kalevi has been making alternative pop that feels both nostalgic and current, combining jazz, funk, psych-rock, and even influences into a sound entirely his own. While he was once called a “dashing synth-pop troubadour” by Pitchfork, Kalevi has never stuck to one particular genre or approach to making music. His newest album, Chaos Magic, is testament to this, featuring collaborators ranging from the esteemed Finnish multi-instrumentalist Jimi Tenor to the French actress Alma Jodorowsky. 

Keiska has played a formative role in Helsinki's experimental scene. Her productions blend trance, EDM, and pop edits, a sound that has pushed her music into the DJ sets of pioneers such as Arca. Her latest 3-track EP, A State of Trans, cracks open the future of deconstructed club music.

The Bandcamp page for Lust For Youth (Hannes Norrvide and Malthe Fischer) describes the Swedish-Danish duo as “Scandinavian antidepressants.” Previously known for their club-bent takes on synth pop and darkwave, Lust For Youth have turned to techno as of recently. On their new string-interpolated dance tracks “Kokiri” and “Dummy” and upcoming album with Danish experimentalist and sound artist Croatian Amor, Dummy, Lust For Youth explore the peripheries of sound yet again.

“Dream Music from Helsinki”

Since releasing their debut album Call for Help in 2020, the Helsinki-based pop duo Pearly Drops (Sandra Tervonen and Juuso Malin) has been building a world as dreamy as it is wistful. Having worked individually with artists such as ALMA, Nightwave and Inga Copeland in the past, Pearly Drops both emerges naturally from the duo’s production work and serves as their own sonic stamp. Released last year, “Lost in the Dark” is one of the newest additions to their own digitally-skewed approach to horror.

Sansibar, the Finnish-Uruguayan DJ and producer, is making waves with his latest We Rise EP, released in March 2024 on his own label, Sin Sistema. The EP's tracks, like the swirling "Elastic," mix acidic techno with futuristic rave sounds, proving his talent for reinventing underground dance music. Known for his genre-blending sets and connections to cutting-edge labels like Kalahari Oyster Cult, Sansibar is quickly becoming a major force in Europe's electronic scene.

The Paris-based Irish-Chilean artist and producer Sega Bodega has been molding the future of electronic and pop music since he began DJing in Glasgow in the early 2010s. With three studio albums and collaborations with Björk, Rosalía, Arca, Caroline Polachek, and Shygirl under his belt, Sega Bodega’s deconstructed approach has influenced many genres, scenes, and music movements regardless of geography. His most recent album, Dennis, is perhaps the best example of his range, moving seamlessly between breakneck club tracks, vocally-driven pop, and ambient lullabies.

Shepherd’s Call is a Helsinki-based electronic duo consisting of Elja Markkanen and Niilo Lehtonen. Leaning towards ambient and experimental sounds, their compositions manage to feel soothing, yet captivating at the same time. 

Since her debut at 15, Swedish artist Toxe has crafted a bold, distinctive sound blending hard drums, warped melodies, and pitch-bending textures. After breaking out with her 2015 EP Muscle Memory, she went on to release music on top underground labels and produced runway soundtracks for major fashion houses. In 2024, she released her first vocal album, Toxe2, sung in Swedish and shaped by years of introspection while studying architecture in Amsterdam. The album further solidifies her place at the frontiers of electronic music.

The pop artist and producer Yullola views music as a form of research. For each project, there is a guiding set of questions, hypothesis, research process, and, of course, results. Having once told Metal that “The future is ancient and the ancient is the future,” Yullola pulls inspiration from multiple mythologies, Indian classical music, and the experience of synesthesia in her own inquiries through time. On her most recent album, Zen Maiden, Yullola transports listeners to a moody, atmospheric monastery for “girls who feel unreal, yet are still in love with reality.”