Tallinn Music Week 2021: Baltic sounds on the brink of tomorrow

Estonian capital plays host to the best in European underground sounds

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before — foreign nationals let loose on an unfamiliar city which, over the course of several days, plays host to scores of artists across a multitude of venues. Well, 21, if anyone actually wants to put a number on it.

Events like Tallinn Music Week (TMW) are many things to many people. At once overwhelming, disorientating, and exciting, despite arriving into the Estonian capital in the dead of the night before action begins we can’t help but lie awake wondering what sights we’re about to see. Even exhaustion at the overly-long journey time from the UK — a result of COVID-19-decimated air routes — can’t bring the sky high expectations back down to land.

And who could blame us. It takes a journalist that’s either brave, honest, stupid or all three to openly admit to recognising very few names from a line-up as hefty as this, with 100 of the 150-plus acts booked to play hailing from inside Estonian borders. But that’s precisely the allure: approval to roam freely between spaces ranging from the inherently atmospheric monastery-style spot known as the House of the Brotherhood of Blackheads (yes, seriously), through to HALL, a rough-around-the-edges, dockside industrial relic primed for the kind of techno Saturday night has pencilled in courtesy of one of the few truly global electronic names on the bill, DVS1. The point being it’s about seeing what there is to be seen.

It doesn’t take long for discoveries to present themselves, not least inside Cultural Hub, AKA Kultuurikatel. Descending below the towering chimneystack dominating its exterior we’re confronted by tier-upon-tier of wrought iron staircases and purple lights. It’s a dystopian aesthetic that perfectly marries the end times we’re living through, but this is also the site of real inspiration. They say you can always tell the quality of a festival based on whether the country’s highest ranking politician is on site. Or at least they should, and TMW certainly fits that bill, with Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid — sadly soon to step down — tapping into the strong emotions everyone in the creative industries has felt since the pandemic began.

“Culture is politics, effective but slow,” she says at one point in her call to action. “Without leaning on culture we come to conflict.” Heard through the ears of a Briton reeling from a health crisis that laid bare a disdain the UK’s political elite has for music and arts, it’s impossible not to feel moved by the idea that a head of state can recognises not just the economic benefits of a thriving creative sector, but the socio-political implications of progressive practice. Positioned as the sign of a nation that wants to collaborate and improve the world, it’s a far cry from that Etonian debating society back home.

Across town — which isn’t far in a city of less than 500,000 inhabitants — Sveta Bar also gives us plenty to consider in terms of culture as a form of expression. The epitome of what a rock club should look like, Estonia’s dreamkrusher! defy assumptions based on their name (not to be confused with the far more trauma-inducing Dreamcrusher), offering up sounds sitting somewhere in the vicinity of Smashing Pumpkins, with shoegazing moments and enough guitar-wielding crescendos to fill this room several over. Passing the mantel to Akli, the Lithuanians are a real highlight, gothic industrial electro-metal Gary Numan could be proud of, ghostly moments interrupting that storm.

Finishing the first night with an aptly-named What’s Next In Music party at Fotografiska (where we catch the excellent staccato synthesis of Monikaze), less than 24-hours on we’re at the building adjacent to Sveta. The walls of D3 are a day (or night) tripper’s dream, a cosmic montage of alien landscapes, starry canopies hanging over primal-looking wolves, and plants plucked straight from Alice In Wonderland. Inside, dark corridors guide us past the curtained-off smoking area and various break out corners, out onto a sizeable wooden dancefloor, subtle lighting and sofas adding an air of ‘imagine if this was your front room’.

Here we’re treated to two-hours from Madis Nestor. The man behind nearby Biit Me, arguably Tallinn’s most respected and versatile record store, he plays a masterclass warmup set opening with opiate jazz inflections, before building tempo into the kind of disco that wears sledgehammers on its feet, those floorboards ensuring a majority local crowd has plenty to stomp into. It’s an ideal warm up for another of the major international dance imports, Running Back boss Gerd Janson, who lives up to the hopes of first timers with a solid selection of heavy drums, funk licks and acid warbles.

Few can complain, although we still manage to drag ourselves away to check out Kauplus Aasia, another venue close by which tonight hosts an all-Russian showcase courtesy of the Import and Kruzhok crews. A varied and party-starting assault of electronic rhythm focused entirely on the floor greets us on arrival, as does bemusement at what this address might have been. Its garden reminiscent of Berlin nightclubs, inside the long, low building things take a turn for the bizarre with the discovery of a basketball court.

And like that it’s pretty much time to call time, with only Saturday’s programme standing between us and our ride home. Making the most of a daytime schedule boasting the best talks of the week — from the panel centred on Italian journalist Johann Merrich’s book, A Short History of Electronic Music and Its Women Protagonists, to a discussion about post-Soviet techno in the region — we leave HALL directly for the airport with several lessons learned.

Firstly, Tallinn is a northern European gem, a city as preserved and beautiful as it is raw and unkempt, making for perhaps one of the best destinations for this kind of music-focused marauding. Secondly, TMW is a slick operation that in many ways should shout louder, although that would be missing the point. In a world of egomaniacal posturing, an event that snubs prescribed headliners in favour of encouraging attendees to dig deep into the depth of its delights — while talking everything from economic sustainability in music to the neuroscience of dancing — is surely made for this era, an age when innovation and new ideas, rather than gaudy salesmanship, are the only cultural currencies that remai

Martin Hewitt