Unexpected sounds in things

by Petar PLAMENOV

12 September (Monday), 2011
NAA Yard, 20:00
National Academy of Arts
DA Fest
Address:
Sofia, 1 Shipka Str.
Phone: 02 988 17 01

Cleaning Women is a three-member band from Finland. Despite their name, all members are actually male. Cleaning Women was founded on 1996 and has had the current line-up since 1999. Cleaning Women uses home-made instruments, such as customized clotheshorses and pickle jars, to create danceable and groovy music.

Despite looking like a gang of sharp and stylish cross-dressing zombies, Cleaning Women is also known for their alternative ways in choosing their instruments. Instead of regular music stores, these professors head for trash bins and home accessory shops in search for “other sounds”. And so it must be, as their weapons of choice include string instruments made out of clotheshorses and a drumset that includes parts from at least 3 washing machines.The group Cleaning Women makes experimental rock and dense music with self-made instruments. The band members write ambitious pieces for clothes drying racks and washing machine drums, but they also provide an entertaining show.




Their main instrument is a collapsible metal clothes drying rack, sometimes called a clothes horse, the prosaic contraption familiar in all cramped apartments. While hanging up clothes one day, Cleaning Women's Risto Puurunen had noticed how a clothes hanger hitting the rack produced an interesting sound. Puurunen began to develop the clothes rack into an instrument distantly reminiscent of a xylophone.

Turning everyday objects into instruments.The original clothes rack bars gave off a nice sound, but they were not really durable enough for being hit. After years of development, Puurunen, Tero Vanttinen, and Timo Kinnunen now have instruments at their disposal that still have the frail-looking original frame, but this is now fitted with tuneable steel "strings" that are played with chopsticks.





Contact microphones attached to the frame pick up the sound of the racks, and after being augmented with strong effects, the result is a massive and captivating sound in marked contrast to the flimsy-looking contraptions produsing them.

After their 2nd album, Aelita- The Queen Of Mars (2005), Cleaning Women has been busy in composing live soundtracks to silent movies and touring around the globe. During the years they have become somewhat a household name for Middle European festival promoters searching for a little more challenging sound from Finland. Their latest success was when the band performed a soundtrack for the Film Aelita – the Queen of Mars for enchanted Luxembourg Philharmonie Hall audience.

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