Remembering the Life and Legacy of Perttu Häkkinen of Imatran Voima (Article)


    • Remembering the Life and Legacy of Perttu Häkkinen of Imatran Voima (Article)

      Perttu Häkkinen, the legendary Finnish musician perhaps best known in the Electro scene for his works as Imatran Voima with Jaakko Kestilä, is also an artist with a fairly extensive solo music career dating back to the year 2000. Having appeared on labels such as Flogsta Danshall, Harmönia, and Losonofono Records as Randy Barracuda, with classics such as the singles "Rick James Is Dead", or "The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions", Häkkinen was also the recording engineer and performer behind many releases like Cae$ar's "Suck My Soul", or post-psychedelic rock band Itäväylä's "Itävalta" album.

      If I remember correctly, it was Lauri Virtanen of the Ural 13 Diktators; another Finnish group with whom I became friends with at the end of the 90's, who suggested to me the duo Imatran Voima. At that time the internet was a very different world from the current one, Google was not so efficient and researching could take several hours. Saving the URL was practically mandatory, and finding records of micro-labels like Kostamus Records (imprint of Imatran Voima), which did not even exist the web, was really difficult. Kevin Lewandowski had not yet launched Discogs, and many fears and phobias reigned over e-commerce for possible scams perpetrated against unsuspecting buyers.

      "Super Breakout", the debut EP of Imatran Voima, was perennially out of stock on Nuloop; the French web store from which I bought records by correspondence, and which made available just 30 seconds of the audio preview to...Read more