Henri Puolitaival
We all know the modern-day Detroit is a desolate, lonely place encompassed
by industrial factory buildings – urban wasteland. That’s
where several world-renown artists drew their influences to create
the innovative and cold sounds of techno filled with soulful warmth.
This is something that one could never imagine happening in Finland,
thousands of miles away from Detroit, a land encompassed with forests,
lakes and beautiful nature rather than destroyed life. And yet from
the northern parts of Finland we can find Henri Puolitaival, whose
feeling and thoughts delivered through the music is strongly influences
by the Detroit sound. Henri’s music is deep and fresh yet
paying respect to the original masters.
Henri’s style is soulful, funky and his compositional skills
are clearly in the foreground. He is a truly capable drum programmer
and can put real mood in his playing, but the compositions and arrangements
of his tracks are something really distinct. Henri’s first
release was “Sommarens Bästa Minne EP” –
Swedish for “the best memory of the summer” –
on Metrotraks, a commercial netlabel on Summer 2004. Already on
the first release showed his talent for building songs instead of
just looping a four-to-the-floor rhythm for five minutes, and one’s
attention seemed to be drawn by nature to the most important issue
– the music itself.
The most amazing thing is that Henri was approximately fifteen
(15!) years old when he made his first release. His first tracks
were already aired by a national radio station in Finland years
ago. What were you doing when you were eleven years old? This true
talent was making killer tracks at that age. If this is what he
can do now, we really can’t wait what he’ll be able
to come up with in five years to the future.
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