Don Johnson Big Band is an encouraging example for all Finnish bands and artists operating outside the mainstream. The 'world's tiniest big band' has managed to struggle all the way to final breakthrough without having resorted to any compromise whatsoever - by doing things precisely when and how they have deemed best. Now they find themselves in a situation which is only a dream for several upstarts aiming to break through with a vengeance and loads of funding.

For now, though, we're not discussing plans to conquer the world - or even Finland - but taking apart the album Breaking Daylight that the band has recently finalised for publishing. Rumba is joined at Café Kafka by DJBB vocalist Tommy Lindgren, keyboardist Johannes Laiho and Kari Saarilahti who specialises in stringed instruments. The fact that also the horn 'section' of the band, Pekka Mikkonen, was originally supposed to come to the interview speaks volumes of the band's unity.

We've agreed that instead of the traditional question/answer type interview we'll go through the album track by track and let the conversation take its own course. This poses no problem for the polite and witty trio. "Just make sure you've got three years' worth of tape," Johannes warns beforehand and points at my teeny recorder.


Breaking Daylight kicks off with the single One MC, One Delay that seems to divide peoples' opinions strongly. The charming musical mixture begins with a drum beat that pays respect to the ZZ Top classic Gimme All Your Lovin' (chiki-dun-d-chi-d-dun-d-chi-d-dun-d-chi-d-dund-chi-chiki-dun-d-...), and as you might expect, this theft was completely premeditated.

"Yup, we've listened to the original beat carefully and we're well aware of the similarity," Kari grins.

"We listen to it all the time. It's the simplest and best beat in the world. There's that one extra snare hit, and that alone makes it the world's most distinctive rhythm. No matter what gear you're playing it with, or with what sounds, it's always recognisable."

"The history of the song is that at some point we were listening to Johannes' dad's car tapes and got the idea to combine country elements with hip hop," Kari tells. "Then it started to develop gradually and the result worked surprisingly well."

If anything, One MC, One Delay is a visual song. To me, it brings to mind the carefree bachelor life of aristocratic lads in the liberal environment of New York in the early 20th century, as seen in the Jeeves and Wooster TV series… God knows why.

"People get all sorts of associations from it, but that's a new one! [Laughs.] Some think that it's got a Mexican feel to it, some think it's Russia-flavoured."

"Quite a few people have been reminded of Kusturica's (Emir, film director from Sarajevo) movie Underground (1995)," Tommy says, "because it has that amazing brass band that keeps playing the one cacophonic melody throughout the entire film. The song does have a certain Slavic, or Balkanic, feel to it."

In the beginning of April, One MC, One Delay was the most played song on YleX radio, and it entered the Finnish singles chart at number two. So, Don Johnson Big Band has made the first real hit of its career.

"Sure it's fun," Tommy admits. "We couldn't really expect anything 'cause we hadn't released any singles before. We couldn't imagine that we'd be played on the Himotuimmat list immediately (list of most desired singles on YleX as voted by listeners)…"

"For a long time, it was a kind of absurd song for us," Kari reveals. "One of those tracks which we weren't really sure would fit anywhere. We had some fairly strong doubts about it, on more than one occasion."

"But when we added the rap, we realised that it's actually quite an action-packed and energetic track," Tommy clarifies. "It's just appropriately chaotic and somehow also one of the more 'different' tracks on the album. I really don't know if the first single should be as similar to all the other tracks as possible, but for us it's really hard to pick just one song that would summarise everything about us."


The thoroughly urban Giant Robot made their own version of Piirpauke's (well-known Finnish folk-pop band from the 1970s) classic song Konevitsan kirkonkellot on the bonus track of their Helsinki Rock City mini album. Don Johnson Big Band also manages to create a feeling of pine-scented Finnishness with the second track of Breaking Daylight, the ballad Penguin that's carried forward by horn melodies.

"Our first steps with the track were taken sometime in the summer 2001, when it was a kind of hip hop ballad in the style of The Roots, but when played live, it soon took on anthem-like force. There have been times when the energy has all but blown up in our hands," Tommy recalls.

"Now we've kind of returned it to the softer sounds and moods. We couldn't really make the more savage bits of live play work in the studio," Johannes explains.

According to Kari, about half of the DJBB songs are born in the studio. The other half are created at the rehearsal sessions, and begin to lead their own lives on stage.

"At some point, we just happened to make an almost instinctive decision not to try and force a live atmosphere into the album. We deliberately wanted to keep the studio side of it audible - at times we even wanted to highlight it."

This suits me fine, as it suits all others who fell in love with the stripped-down ambiences of the debut album Support de Microphones. These moods, cool and laid-back in the vein of DJ Shadow and DJ Krush, can be heard on the third track of Breaking Daylight. Tinged with a couple of French verses, Royalty is seemingly an extremely sophisticated song, but a story about its origin reveals that perhaps its makers aren't such clever guys after all.

"The chorus-like rhymes in the beginning, middle and end of the track were written quite spontaneously," reveals Tommy. "As I was recording my vocals, I was looking at Johannes' book shelf, tilting my head to one side, picking out book titles and reading them out aloud. These 'poetic profession' and 'la maison de demain' (home of tomorrow) bits came about just because, you know, I felt that something probably needed to be said at the end too! [laughs] The takes sounded like I'd done them in the moment, in the right mood, and so we didn't really want to fiddle with them later."

Inspiration - as well as a title for the song - was also found in Cosmopolitan magazine.

"I had at home an issue of Cosmopolitan with a small piece about us," Johannes says. "There was also this story about a woman… like a model example of a successful Finnish woman who had set up some companies at some fucking islands in the Pacific Ocean. And for Cosmopolitan, her most important merit was that she'd been partying in Paris at the same night clubs with royalty."

"So, these things aren't always so well thought-out as they may seem [laughs]," Tommy summarises.


The fourth song to ring out from the stereo system, Harlem Davidson, isn't - a pity as it is - a cover version of the song Harley Davidson that was composed by Serge Gainsbourg and made famous by Brigitte Bardot. There are no other covers either on Breaking Daylight, even if the band covered both Louis Armstrong (Wonderful World) and the Finnish easy listening legend Kirka (Suru) on their debut album. However, it hasn't been a matter of principle.

"No, it hasn't, no… we had planned to do one this time around as well, but when it began to look like we had more than enough tracks already, we felt there was no need to force it."

What the song was, the band refuses to reveal, since it's possible that they'll end up recording it one day. But one thing is certain: it's not Gimme All Your Lovin.

"No. But you're close," Tommy laughs.

On Harlem Davidson, as well as on a couple of other tracks on Breaking Daylight, we can hear vocals by Emma Salokoski, the lead singer of Finnish band Quintessence. Heaven only knows what the gorgeous singer must have been thinking when being briefed about the kind of spheres the song aims to achieve.

"We wanted it to feel sort of like riding around Turkey with a motorbike. And to have a kind of public announcer vibe to it, you know, the sounds you hear when going around the stadium. With vocals so fast that they are sure to work out a sweat," Kari explains.

"At one point, when I hadn't really made any decisions about the lyrics, they told me that I should aim for a kind of motor racing vibe, but on the other hand I was told to create a really oriental feel to it," Tommy adds shaking his head.

"Yeah, we're definitely not the right guys to write songs about motor sports," Johannes grins.

The duskily dubbing, almost instrumental Behind 16 Bars was composed by Johannes with the turntables while looking for samples. It leads the listener onwards to Salt Water, one of the high points of the album. In its lyrics, the end of the summer feel is combined with nostalgic longing for 'good old' hip hop: "l never thought the day would arrive when the / same music once able to drive people insane and burn / turntables alive would suddenly start to turn sour / polished unrecognizable; slowly devour its surroundings".

"In a weird way it evolved into a critique towards contemporary hip hop - not a particularly direct one, but a critique nonetheless," Tommy ponders. "I guess it's a result of the fact that I feel some of the artists I liked in '95 or '96 have taken a turn for the worse. It involves that certain feeling of being pissed off that comes from… why is it that even the good bands always have to have an R&B chorus in their songs? On the other hand, the longing for the good old times is naturally quite ironic of us: In the end it escalates into some real deep pathos. We haven't really been crying ourselves to sleep because of the state of hip hop. But it's been close."

For its suitably old-fashioned, robust sounds, the impressive mood-setter would feel right at home in the hip hop producer Rjd2's prodigious Deadringer epic. Breaking Daylight is devoid of influences by such hip hop modernists as the Neptunes.

"So far we haven't experimented with the twitching, modern R&B/hip hop beat," Kari says.

"If we ever decide to embrace it, it should twitch like there's no tomorrow," comments Johannes.

The following minutes are spent determining twitchiness that would accommodate the high standards of DJBB. The discussion ends with a summary by the band's vocalist, whose daytime job is with a human rights organisation: "Our music is a bit like a pissed retard."


Placed in the halfway house of Breaking Daylight, Nightman has plenty of 'nightly moods' which Tommy promised to Rumba in March. The piano-led song has reminded many of - erm - Robert Miles. In reality the track is much closer to the atmosphere of Massive Attack's underrated album Protection and its instrumental tracks written by Craig Armstrong. "It's grandiose, yet not particularly corny," Kari describes - confessing nevertheless that, among all the soppiness, it's not always easy to keep a straight face.

"But I have to say that the track works really well when you're driving around in the middle of the night. It's a kind of a long-trajectory song, and makes great listening in a snowfall at around 3 AM."

"If there's any semblance of a theme in the lyrics, it's homelessness," Tommy reveals. "I've had this mental image of a guy walking around with a shopping cart. You don't really see that too often in Helsinki, unless you close your eyes."

Northbound is a more minimalist track built around a guitar riff which Kari came up with while he was 'calming his nerves in the archipelago'. It's followed by the delightfully up-tempo Tokyo Ranger - an instrumental accentuated by a funny koto sound.

"It's actually a collage of short samples taken from somewhere like those koto compilations they sell in supermarkets," Kari laughs. "We wanted the album to have at least one instrumental track so that it wouldn't be stuffed too full with vocals. Its production is closest to the likes of DJ Shadow: unvarnished sounds with elaborate distortions - which we didn't even try to polish in the end."

"I'm not saying my own vocals piss me off - quite the contrary, I feel that on this album they're surprisingly solid - but the track is a nice breather. You know, at least I myself as a listener feel good at that point in the record," Tommy confesses.

After Nutwood Cut, which is based on 'mock-up jazz', the album progresses again on to relatively straightforward rap rhythms. Alongside One MC, One Delay, Penguin and Salt Water, Two Reasons is one of Breaking Daylight's most straightforward rap tracks. It is followed by absolutely the most peculiar performance on the album, the totally outrageous Jah Jah Blow Job, where highbrow lyrics and the easygoing music contradict each other deliciously.

"Close up the border, declare a state of alert / I'll take your president for hostage with a pen, it's gonna hurt / and make him sit down at a table, lock his ankles to the chair / listen to him screaming for his bitch Tony where?"

"It's an amalgamation of the Eurovision Song Contest and political ragga in all its various forms," Tommy chuckles.

"Yep, it's one of our 'conscious' tracks," giggles Johannes.

"All the people I have played it to have been deeply disturbed. It has that zealous critique towards world politics, delivered with unrestrained fervour, and then suddenly you hear that flirtatious sax melody: tat-ta-dat-tat-taa… well, it is quite a freaky combination. I think of it as an 'it's a crazy world' type of thing."

Ragga is from time to time almost a dominating element at Don Johnson Big Band shows; yet on Breaking Daylight it's carried solely in Jah Jah Blow Job since the band has chosen not to record their Snow cover Informer.

"What I'm really drawn to in the whole ragga thing is its combination of absolute musical shamelessness and ignorance," Johannes grins.

* * *

We've managed to fill the 90-minute interview tape. The three-year tape Johannes asked for proved to be a slight exaggeration - even more so when the final track on the album speaks for itself. The sincere and fragile Broken Daylight is a beautiful epilogue with its atmosphere of finality. So the time has come to let Tommy, Kari and Johannes leave and take on new challenges.

The spring sun shines outside. In the near future it will witness the world's tiniest big band grow really, really big.