BIO
Rubik WILL make your skin crawl at some
point. This happens when you’re forced to peer too far into anything. Vertigo.
It’s a curse, the knowing of another’s inner thoughts. Right after making you
squirm, the band will lift you up with a cascade of melody. It’s a
rollercoaster ride, vacillating between the micro- and macrocosmic.
Rubik’s self-produced second album, Dada Bandits, does a scary little
high-wire dance between the intimate and the elephantine, the melodic and the
noisy, the gorgeous and the hideous. They can be as withdrawn and obtuse as the
artiest rock band out there and then bust out with a melodic hug potent enough
to enclose the globe. Rubik can go from sounding like a well oiled,
world-conquering machine to a broken down, cigarette encrusted bar piano.
The band offers the opportunity for a riot
of (subjective) trainspotting, comparable to the most crate-centred DJ Shadow
cut out there. The trick is that none of it is obvious at all and if you tell
your friends, they’ll disagree. There are no facts. So if I tell you that to me
Rubik takes the textures and atmospheres of TV on the Radio and marries them to
the spiritual comfort of a Sufjan Stevens horn section, while spicing things up
with a naïve melodic touch worthy of the Cure and then manages to rock out to
the point of degenerating into noise, you are well within your rights to
vehemently disagree. And you’ll be right, too, but so will I. One thing’s for
sure, though. Dada Bandits can take
more listens then you realize and continue to provide little revelations each
time. This band is currently firing on all
cylinders.
Since 2005, when the band released its
first EP, People Go Missing, and
strode straight out of left field to claim its place the great indie hope for a
new millennium, Rubik has revelled in the tension created by throwing itself in
many directions at once. Bad Conscience Patrol, the Fullsteam
Records debut, was a popular and critical smash hit in 2007, hitting the heavy
metal-armoured Finnish album chart right in the leather-clad gut at number 7.
They played a load of gigs in Europe and North America and shared stages with
the likes of Mogwai, Autechre, Apostle of Hustle and Disco Ensemble.
They were never out of place. Not once.
MEMBERS
Artturi Taira - vocals, guitar, keyboards
Sampsa Väätäinen - drums
Jussi Hietala - bass
Samuli Pöyhönen - guitar, keyboards
Domestic
