ABSTRACT
Finnish underground techno artists, often the experimentally minded, were noticed in the scattering European, British, and American techno scenes of the mid-1990s. The media labeled them as the culmination of a new and original wave of the Northern European electronic music. Often musical qualities such as structural and rhythmic rigidity, the melodic and harmonic minimalism, and rawness of sounds were portrayed as typical and even “natural” for Finnish techno. The chapter discusses the birth of the “Finnish austerity” and how European and British media understood the music, its cultural context, and historical background.
