Ramin Kuntopolku: Urban Grind Guerilla

2013-02-102017-11-29 Klaudia Weber

Admittedly, I have a particular soft spot for, well, slightly different acts, and many of those come from Finland – be it cellists playing Metal, a band using washing machine parts and laundry racks as instruments, angry shouting men forming a choir or musicians with a faible for protruding hairstyles&pointy shoes, only to mention a few. But are they all now overshadowed by this young Urban Grind duo from Jyväskylä, who add a certain aspect of danger to their guerilla gigs? Besides this “getting caught” thing, honestly I would not consider a diving platform as ideal place for a performance … Yet this is exactly what Rami and Saku already did and kindly explain here why …

Please introduce yourselves (well, as far as you can without revealing your identities) – how did you two meet, and how did this whole thing start?
We are the “urban grind” band Ramin Kuntopolku from Jyväskylä Finland. We play improvised grind gore in random places.
The whole thing started a few years back in 2010, when we both were unemployed. We had played in the same “real” band for years and since we both had no jobs, we had nothing to do.
One morning I (Saku the singer) received a phonecall from Rami (the drummer). Rami explained that he got “the best idea ever”. We took Ramis drum set and megaphone and headed outside to play. We played in several different places in our city and more and more people gathered to watch. Finally after a few hours of playing in places like overpass bridge, side of a mountain, local quarry etc, we played our last gig of the day behind a super market to a several hundred people audience.
This “journey” was taped and dumped into youtube and a week later we got our first gig in a local music festival. Our first video got very popular among Finnish metal scene and we have performed and made new videos ever since all around Finland.

How long have you been playing together?
We have played in the same projects at least five years for now. But Ramin Kuntopolku was founded in the spring 2010.

Are you playing in other bands now too?
Currently we both play in the same deathmetal band called Raster Density. We also have different projects, but Raster Density and Ramin Kuntopolku are the only bands that we both play in.

What is the story behind the band name – does it indeed mean “Rami´s fitness path”? Who is Rami?
Yes, indeed it does mean Ramis fitness path, but even though the drummers first name is Rami, the name of the band has nothing to do with him.
When we were playing the first time, the second gig of the night was played in a small quarry. We were unloading the car´s trunk before the gig and one of our friends found a sign wich read “Ramin Kuntopolku”. It just so happened that night before, our friend was walking in a local fitness path, piss ass drunk. He saw this random sign on the side of the road and pried it off the tree that it was hanging from. So when we found this sign from the cars trunk, the name of our band was decided.

Have there ever been more than 2 band members (well, and the third one, Sulo the megaphone, of course)?
We once tought about the possibility of employing a guitarist, but since all our songs are improvised on the spot, we decided to keep it simple. So there has always been just the two of us…. plus Sulo.

How long does it take to set up and remove the whole “backline”?
It depends on the place we are playing in. But usually it takes from 1 to 2 minutes.

Have you ever had to escape from the police, because of the masks and/or a too spontaneous gig somewhere, or to run from other people who did not quite enjoy the show?
We have run from the cops only once, when we played at our friends backyard in the middle of the suburbs of Jyväskylä. We only had played for like 2 minutes when somebody said that the cops were coming. Other than that, people have been very cooperational, since we play only from 10 to 20 minutes at a time.

What was the weirdest live situation /location for you so far?
We´ve played in many weird places, but the weirdest so far must be, when we played a gig in a sauna. It was one of the many gigs we played at the local Lutakko Liekeissä festival last summer. At the same festival we also played on the roof of one of the buildings. Good times!

What was the biggest/ the smallest audience so far?
Our biggest audience was at the tuska open air 2012 when we played 3 days in a row. There must have been at least 1000 people crowd listening this shit. Our smallest audience must have been when we played at the back of a van, while driving on a motorway. The driver was the only one who heard that gig.

What do you want to achieve with the band? Do you have any “dream gig” e.g. on top of Empire State Building, or the elevator at Harrods London or sth?
We have always wanted to play on a hot air balloon or under water with scuba gear perhaps?
There really isn´t any particular goals we want to achieve. We just do this for fun and the free beer of course.

Your plans for 2013, more gigs/festivals? I figure it´s difficult to capture this whole concept only acoustically on CD, you plan a DVD, documentary etc?
We are trying to score some gigs in Europe, but we cant reveal too much yet. We are trying to get more festival gigs this year and less indoor gigs. We hate playing indoors.
There will never be a dvd documentary, but betamax release will be open to debate.

https://www.facebook.com/RAMINKUNTOPOLKU
Ramin Kuntopolku videoclips on Youtube, e.g.:

RAMIN KUNTOPOLKU - URBAN GRIND