Gig reports

Assembly 2005 - 28.7.2005, Helsinki, Finland

In May 2005 we were contacted by a member of the Assembly 2005 livecrew wishing to know if we were interested in playing a gig at the worlds largest demo-scene event at Hartwall Arena. We exchanged a glance, responded with a collective "Hell yeah!" and began planning the show without delay.

On our past gigs there had been several requests for Turrican 2, so we decided to include that in our set. We also revised our video show quite radically: we remade all the videos and synced the visuals with the songs. Sonadi - by now essentially the fifth Axe - would come along with us to Assembly as our VJ.

Early in the morning of Thursday the 28th of July the five of us crammed into a VW Polo and started off towards Helsinki, towing a trailer very inexpertly laden with our instruments and amplifiers. It was around seven in the evening when we finally caught sight of Hartwall Arena. After hour upon hour of sitting in a car we were glad of the flurry of activity that
followed: unload the trailer, go to the infodesk to get our ID badges, assemble as much of our equipment as we could without disturbing the ongoing seminars, grab a bite to eat. At ten thirty a brief interview for AsmTV with a lovely young lady called Suvi, then back to waiting for the seminars to end.

After the conclusion of the last of Thursday's seminar sessions we instantly began setting up the stage for our show. This time the gig was in the Assembly TV studio which had a nice atmosphere. It was a dark place with tons of cool media gear and a stage filled with lights.

H-P, a former Skyfix guitarist, and Jani, a friend of Hane's, had agreed to give us a hand with the carrying around of various things in exchange for free admission - big thanks, guys. We were delayed a bit from the announced kick-off time of half past midnight, but not enough for the crowd to get bored and go away. We decided to do our best to convince them that it had been a good idea to stick around and launched into our hard rockin' rendition of Delta. That went down well, and so did the rest of the set, judging by the applause and the after-show conversations. Turrican 2 got a very good reception, which was encouraging, you can never tell for sure about new material until you've tested it on an actual audience. As a special treat for all the sceners we played Onward and showed some clips from the demo Dope. Sonadi did a beautiful VJ'ing job throughout the show.

It was really cool to come back to Assembly, we had a great time and we hope that we'll get to do another Asm gig in a couple of years. In the meantime, however, we have other things to focus on. Jyrkkäkoski, here we come!

Colour photos from the gig by Aki Salento
Black and white photo by Tuomas Nylund

Anaboli Stereo feeling the Turrican 2 intro.



Guys having a battle during the C-64 classic International Karate.



Videos from our Asm 03 gig were displayed on Arena's TVs and screens before our show.


The girl was not part of our promo ;)

Inside the Hartwal Arena during the instrumental music compo. Thousands of computers down below. Red Sun Rising got on the screen.