Okay! Big news here! Our next 7″, Den Baron’s “Bonving”, will be released on July 1st! I will start shipping copies this Thursday and again, a reminder, if you are in Spain and want copies of any records let me know as I’ll be heading to your beautiful country next week.
I am very excited and happy with this 7″ by Den Baron. I think it came out great, 3 classic sounding indiepop tracks, and with great artwork for the jacket to boot. Do not miss this record. It is pretty pretty!
Remington Super 60: the Norwegian band is back after a bit with a wonderful and pretty song called “The Highway Again”. It is lovely. Fragile and sweet, with evocative vocals. I think this is my favourite song from my weekend!
Captain Scrunchie: Sarita, Shay, Zoe and Nate, a girl group from Richmond, Virginia, with artwork that resembles Beat Happening. Four new songs that make their demo simply titled “Demo”. The songs being “Tomorrow”, “True”, “Something Strange” and “Gift Horse”. They sound great.
Fresh: I have featured this London band on the blog before. And I am repeating because I like them of course. Now they have a new album called “Withdraw” that boasts 12 fun upbeat indiepop songs. The only problem is that if you wanted the vinyl version of it, only 5 copies are available! But there are CD copies too, so don’t despair!
The Caraway/Sweet Port: the two Japanese bands are part of a split cassette released by Kei’s label Disques Blue-Very. How cool! I had interviewed The Caraway before, but I was not familiar with Sweet Port. But hey, this sounds great. Three songs each, and they even cover Louis Philippe and Po! Great taste by the label and the bands!
Flying Fish Cove: Jigsaw Records just moved from Seattle to Portland and at the same time they are releasing new records! Impressive really. How productive is our friend Chris! This time around he is working again with the superb band from Seattle, releasing the “En Garde” EP. A 4 song CD that reminds us of bands from the 90s, like Twig or Heavenly. Good stuff!
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It has been a while since a Finnish band was featured on the blog, possibly since the wonderful Super. So today I wanted to talk about a classic indiepop band from Finland, Cessna, who I must say I don’t know much even though they are perhaps one of the most well-known bands that the country produced when it comes to indiepop!
The Cessna Aircraft Company was an American general aviation aircraft manufacturing corporation headquartered in Wichita, Kansas. Best known for small, piston-powered aircraft, Cessna also produced business jets. For many years the company was one of the highest-volume producers of general aviation aircraft in the world. Founded in 1927, it was purchased by General Dynamics in 1985, then by Textron, Inc. in 1995. In March 2014, when Textron purchased the Beechcraft and Hawker Aircraft businesses, Cessna ceased operations as a subsidiary company and joined the others as one of the three distinct brands produced by Textron Aviation.
I have only just started trying to get all their records. It may take some time as they had quite a few singles plus many compilation appearances. But let’s see what I can find online for now, what do I need on my record collection.
The first release that Discogs lists dates from 1995. It is a tape called “Hobby-Like!” which was a self-released demo the band put together on September of that year. This must be pretty rare. It had 7 songs on it, “Utterly Alone”, “Cardamom Kiss”, “Reconcile”, “My Blue Anglia”, “Oh Grey”, “This Will End in Tears” and “Non-Stop”, and I wonder how many copies were made.
1997 seems to have been the year of their breakthrough as they put quite a few things out. The first was a 7″ on our friend Chris’s label Jigsaw Records (PZL006). It was a 7″ EP that included 1 of the songs from the demo tape, “Utterly Alone” and “Floating” on the A side and then “Garlic” and “Window Seat” on the B side. It originally was pressed on white vinyl and green sleeve and later repressed in April 1998 on white vinyl and yellow sleeve.
That year the band was to start working with Radio Khartoum. The Oakland based label was to be their biggest supporter. That year they released a double mini-CD album called “Bordeaux” (khz197). The first mini CD had the songs “Dreamt of You”, “Continental Dinner”, “Cardamom Kiss”, “Non-Stop” and “We Can Still Be Friends”. The second mini CD had “Birds”, “Skyscrapers”, “So Unreal”, “Explain to me Again”, “Sunday So Soon”, “Oh Grey”, “Rainy Season” and “Nikosia”. The song were recorded by Janne Jokinen, Aki Ala-Kakko and the band between January 1995 ad September 1996 and were mixed by Janne. The band was at this time Jani Tihinen, Kimmo Sääskilahti, Sami Rouhento and Tomi Takala, and on this record they had the help of Anna, Mikko and Saana. Also it is worth noting that the band hailed from the city of Tampere.
I visited Tampere when I was in Finland a few years back. It seemed a very quiet town. I didn’t check out any record stores and the Moomin museum hadn’t yet been inaugurated. I visited a museum that showed how people lived back in the day while working for the company Finlayson. I visited the area where this company, founded by a Scot, had their headquarters. I saw the river and its rapids. And their cathedral too that had this amazing frescoes by Hugo Simberg. I was there just for the morning as in the afternoon I headed to Hämeenlinna to check its castle.
The band contributed the song “It’s Time” to the compilation “This is Stereophonic Sunshine” (Castle-1) that the US label Sandcastle records released in 1997. Also, on this same year. the band had their song “Continental Dinner” on “Winter Rose” a compilation CD that came alongisde the 10th volume of the Beikoku-Ongaku magazine.
In 1998 the band returned with a new 7″ on the lovely Fantastic Records (fan007). Three new songs were included in the record, the A side had “My Blue Anglia” while the B side had “Well I Guess I Don’t Mind” and “Sunday Afternoon”. That same year the band had “Explain Me Again” on the legendary “Seven Summers International Pop Volume 2” that TweeNet Communications and Kindercore put together. I’ve talked quite a bit about this record in the past I think!
In 1999, on a silkscreened blue felt jacket and blue vinyl the band released “Television Song”, a new 7″. It had the song “Sunflowers” as the B side and was released by the Japanese label Honeydew 45 (dewbeedew-one). This is the only release listed for this label! Our friend Shirley Beans included them too that year on the compilation “I Made it Out of Clay: a Hannukah Pop Compilation” with their song “Home for Holiday”.
The year 2000 saw the light of day another single, this time on mini CD, on Radio Khartoum (khz100). It was titled “The Loves, Longings and Regrets of Cessna)”. It had 7 songs, “Summer Boy, Winter Girl”, “Why Be Bashful?”, “Milan, Japan”, “East Rigolo Motorway”, “What You Don’t Know”, “Coffee and Tea” and “Go Easy Gavin”. There is a much longer list here of performers, Anna Rouhento, Jani Tihinen, Kimmo Sääskilahti, Mikko Ojanen, Sami Rouhento, Tomi Takala and Tuure Välimaa. The art is credited to Bügelfrei who was of course Alexander Bailey who runs the Radio Khartoum label.
Their song “Milan, Japan” was to be included in the Philippines-only CD compilation “I’d Spend My Day With You” that was releasde by Universal Records (UR-1). There was a CD and cassette for this release.
2003. Another single, this time on 12″. It was a remixes record called “Time Ticks Remixes” (lento 301) that the Finnish label Amuri Air put out. It included “Time Ticks Away (Nu Science Version)” (Mikko Ojanen who produced some of the band’s music was in Nu Science) and “Time Ticks in Kauttua (Handmade Version)” on the A side and “Dub Ticks Away (Sami Koivikko Remix)” on the B side.
2004 would see the release of their first and only proper album, “Terminus”. It came out on Radio Khartoum (khz303) and was released on CD. There are 14 songs, all mastered by Jiri Novak and recorded and mixed by Mikko Ojanen: “Untitled”, “Encore Toujours”, “What You Wanna Say”, “Untitled”, “Book”, “Wide Awake”, “Time Ticks Away”, “This Will End in Tears”, “It’s About Time”, “Like I Love You”, “Passikiven-Kekkosentie”, “Kauttua”, “Moving On” and “-“. Now the performers listed shrunk a little, Jani Tihinen, Jari Hilden, Kimmo Sääskilahti, Sami Rouhento and Tomi Takala. Bear in mind too that the “Untitled” tracks are not listed on the sleeve.
In the past, when covering Finnish bands, I’ve mentioned the 4CD boxset called “Sivulliset – Valikoima Suomalaista Vaihtoehtorockia Vuosilta 1985-2000” by Poko Poko Records. Here Cessna also appears, this time with their classic track “My Blue Anglia”. Almost 10 years later another label was to include them in another compilation. Jigsaw Records was to have their track “Television Song” on the “Puzzle Pieces” (PZL050) 2014 compilation that celebrated 50 releases of this label.
Is that all? Well no. The band also appeared on a tape called “McBain” that was released in the US I suppose sometime in the 90s. There is no date listed for it though we do know that Yuan-Min Lu compiled this tape in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Cessna contributed the song “My Blue Anglia” and they appear alongside other top 90s bands like Red Sleeping Beauty, The Cat’s Miaow, Moving Pictures and more.
After the demise of Cessna we know that Jani went to form Artisokka who released a fine album on Shelflife Records as well as the bands All Stars and Läski. Jari and Sami also were part of Artisokka, though Sami also played in Fuzzy Lights, Killa and Risto. Tomi was also part of The Villain.
I find some interesting details on a press sheet put together by Radio Khartoum for the “Terminus” album. There I notice that the band started in 1994. And that not only the band had a song remixed by Nu Science but that they actually collaborated with Nu Science on a single recording called “Maatamo” that was included in the 2001 soundtrack “The Soft Rains of Delta Cephel”. Ojanen, who I mentioned earlier was part of Nu Science, had contributed to every single release since a 1996 demo tape. Then I find out that Artisokka was going on as the same time as Cessna around the time that Hildén moved to Helsinki where he started that band.
I know there used to be a website for the band but it is long gone. So that’s about all I could find on the web.
Surely there are thousands of hits of the aeroplanes and so on of Cessna, but even finding photos of the band was tricky. So I would love to get some information about them. I noticed that Sam Rouhento was active on the Scandinavian mailing list in the 90s so I wonder what was their connection with other bands from the period. I would love to know what was on the 1996 demo tape that is mentioned to be the starting point for Ojanen’s collaboration with the band. If there are more recordings. And more importantly, what are they doing these days?
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Listen
Cessna – Milan, Japan
