Around
1995 I attended a
rave at
Wanha,
Helsinki with a bunch of friends. Although the party officially had an age limit of 18, it luckily wasn't enforced at all, allowing
kids like myself to enter.
And what a great event it was. All the top
DJs, well done
lights and
video screens, and most importantly lots of wonderful
people having fun with no sign of the
poser hordes. We all had a
blast, and the only
drug we took was
H2O.
But there was one thing terribly wrong in there.
The
MC.
For some reason, the
organizers had hired a completely
talentless and
extremely annoying person to be the MC on the main floor. He clearly didn't belong in there, and of all the bad MCs I had heard he was the
worst. While talking about the rave next day, all of us agreed he was the only thing that truly
sucked that night.
Nowadays the same clown - Raymond Ebanks - is better known as B.O.W, the MC in Bomfunk MC's.
Prior to this, he has also worked as a rapper in a flopped band Soup de Loop, hosted Electric Circus on MTV3 and claimed to be the person who single-handedly brought hip hop to Finland. *cough*
The other visible member of this one hit wonder is DJ Gizmo, a dreadlock-sporting fellow who apparently has been a real DJ in the past. Upon joining Bomfunk Mc's he has traded it for fake scratching at playback performances. The royalties must be good.
In addition to these two characters, there are some live instrument players plus a breakdancing group called Savage Feet to spice up the playback shows now and then. Unfortunately they seem to forget to turn on the bass amplifier and drum mics on most gigs. :)
Of course, none of the people mentioned above have much to do with the actual music (apart from B.O.W.:s lyrics). The producer behind Bomfunk MC's is none other than Jaakko Salovaara (alias JS16), who creates the sounds for two of the three internationally successful Finnish artists at the moment (the other being Darude). As far as I can tell he makes 100% of the tracks apart from some minimal scratch samples recorded by Gizmo.
About the music...
I'm not sure if the group is based around any special concept, except copying the latest chart topper and putting Raymond's rap on top of it. I have to disagree with Nordicfrost here. IMHO the word "techno" can't be found within a 100 kilometer radus of BM. Their sound is just basic euro-pop like the other typical VengaBoyScooters.
B.O.W., who most likely came up with the group's insightful and street credible name, describes their style as "electro house".
Um, Ok.
Since one is to avoid highly subjective writeups, I'd better not comment on Raymond's flashy buzzword.
Despite of releasing many singles, so far the group has only had a single hit - the infamous Freestyler. Its popularity and sales reached quite impressive numbers for a project from Finland, but their follow-up single didn't do nearly as good.
Apparently the record company has finally realized the OHW quality of Bomfunk, since they just released a remix of the groups first ever single which sounds exactly like Freestyler. The suits didn't even bother to get Salovaara's ass to the studio to make minor adjustments to the beat. It's the same song, with its rhythm track replaced by Freestyler's one. Classy.
At least the new video is rather well done by Finnish standards, mostly because its budget is probably more than all other music videos made in this country last year put together.
By the way, The group's name really does have the apostrophe in it.
"Bomfunk MC's what?" is something I'd like to know.
Apologies for many subjective comments. I'm only human! :)