Mor Festival Q&A

With 2 albums on DeFocus, a concept album on Belgian label U-Cover and a new album on Merck (released May this year) Esa Ruoho (aka Lackluster) comes to Ireland for the first time for Mór..

Reading Q&As on your website seem to indicate that you are fairly disillusioned at the moment. Is this so ?

It changes on a daily basis but right now it's just too easy to concentrate on the little things that are going wrong (due to not being active and therefore actually having spare time to sit around and moan about things not happening) as opposed to actually enjoying life. thankfully things seem to be calming down, now what with not having the net at home.

Does living in Helsinki make you feel an outsider to the electronica scene and in turn more difficult to comprehend that you for one so young you have achieved significant recognition? ?

Helsinki, at one point in time, had 3 major artists (Vladislavdelay, Brothomstates, Ovuca/Astrobotnia) living in the same city, and how many times have these 3 played together anywhere in Finland? None.

Its easy to feel like an outsider in your own country, especially since I don't quite think there's an electronica scene here to be nurtured, at all. (and if there is, it's crippled and dead, constantly being driven over by certain other styles of music). Difficult to comprehend that there's any interest out there ~ over here they won't stock my records. .

What was playing to the home crowd at the Koneisto festival like?

Yes, you too can play to a comatose scene complete with mattresses.
And have people walk out when you actually swoop away from lush pads and put in a rhythm. Everything thats slightly off-center gets lumped into the ambient/chillout scene. Far be it for artists like Brothomstates to actually play at a main stage in Finland, no, they'll get the comatose-mattress -treatment.

'Play something nicer', 'dancing on the mattresses forbidden'.

You have said you’re “a bit stressed” by being billed one of the headliners at Mór. Why?

First trip to Ireland..
First festival abroad..
First headliner, ever..

A load of known-to-be-talented name-artists who deserve to be billed as headliners not being. Let's just say there's a load of negative thought-processes colliding inside my head going off in such directions as letting down the audience, disappointing the better-worthy artists and just generally being an overall failure over there.

And then there's stagefright. For anyone else it'd be an awaited vacation to a lush place in the countryside, but I can see managing to distill it into its essence, i.e. everyone's looking at you funny.

I'll get me coat...

You’ve also said you’re “not really in the mood to listen to anything at all anymore”. Might it just be the dark dank weather and propensity to drink too much which has you in this state. Will Ireland, therefore, be a home from home? Any track we should drop over here to cheer you up?

On the contrary, the weather in finland has been so warm this summer that there's people out there complaining and being sick of it.

Propensity to drink too much, eh? I can't hold my liquor..

Theres not much stuff I really want to listen to anymore, most of the new stuff is 'nice' to 'pleasant'.. old stuff has worn itself out, and sadly some people have worn a nice little circle for themselves. Round and round

Track? Don't play any of mine. I'll just stomp off. or something. Which track should I drop there to cheer you up?