LIVE REPORT: Carolin Koss, Rešham, & Satori Sun
Love Potion Club
Playhouse Bar; March 6th, 2024
Helsinki Psych Live Underground
As a big fan of Helsinki Psych Fest, I’ve had my eyes on the Love Potion Club—which takes place at Playhouse Bar in Helsinki every month—for a good long while. March meant the announcement of three new acts on the music club’s roster: Carolin Koss (known also as the lead vocalist of Orbiter), Rešham, and Satori Sun. Since I was in town anyways, it seemed like a good idea to go check it out!
First of all, I was ludicrously early to this show. Perhaps I’m still getting the 24-hour clock confused, or perhaps I just remembered wrong, but either way, this show started awfully late for a weeknight. I had expected the doors or even the first set to be at 19.00, so I thought that I was going to be late, but it turned out that I was over 2 hours early, because the first set wasn’t supposed to be until 21:00. In my attempts to figure out what went wrong in my scheduling, I realized that the showtimes had only been mentioned once, quite a long time ago, without any bands attached to them. Those times ended up being inaccurate too, because the first act, Carolin Koss, didn’t get going until 21.15ish. This meant that this was a very late-running night, but at least I had time to stop by Bites Burgers in the same building to get dinner without any rush.
As mentioned, Carolin Koss is better-known as the vocalist for Orbiter. Originally from Germany, she is more broadly and artist, musician, and filmmaker, with an interest in the environment and dystopias. Her set started with her on a facny little white ukulele (I have a special fondness for anyone who uses ukulele and doesn’t make it immediately sound like children’s music or pirate shanties), while her band included a fellow on electric cello (what an unwieldly-looking instrument!) and another on keyboards, who later swapped over to guitar. She put on a vibrant performance, not limiting herself to the stage at times. She did a nice job of talking to the crowd a bit, joking that her (really great) outfit was falling apart, and when her keyboardist swapped to guitars halfway through the set, she took over on keyboards. This was their first show of 2024 and there was a really good turnout already to hear their deep, moody, atmospheric songs!
Rešham were up next—these guys are a local 3-piece that I’d never heard of before now. They seemed like they might’ve been better suited to play at SIN at Tiivistämö than Frozen Factory was, stylistically, as they played a much more “stonery” sort of psychedelic rock. The music was, at different times, ambient, spacey, psychedelic, groovy, and funky, which made the vocals seem quite strange to me, as most of them involved the singer shrieking like a banshee. For folks who like that sort of things, power to you, but in my case, I found myself enjoying everything as long as the singer wasn’t sounding like he was being tortured. Ultimately, when they were just rockin’ out, I really enjoyed their set, but overall, it seems their music is not for me because of those vocal style.
Last on the roster were the fresh-faced and extremely young-looking Satori Sun, who were playing their first-ever live show! They played a much more traditional sort of psychedelic rock—catchy, fun, and rockin’—while even dipping their toes into some flower child -type music, with a generally pleasant and groovy sound. Also, shout-out to their bassist who had one of the most beautiful instruments I’ve seen in ages! It seems they’ve likely been inspired by such acts as Kingston Wall, as they even did a cover of “Shine on Me”—some big shoes to fill for your first show, but they did a really good job of it! During an early song, there was a waft of stage clouds that really added to the atmosphere (which also, interestingly and ironically enough, carried the light scent of grass on its first bursts). They were pretty playful on stage, laughing and chatting with the crowd, who seemed to be largely made up of their friends and family at this point of the night. If there was one fault in their show, it was just that the drummer looked utterly miserable the whole time—I was wondering if his dog had died (or something) or if he was just that nervous, because he was honestly bumming me out a bit, especially compared to the rest of the band, who seemed like they were really having fun. I haven’t seen anyone look that unhappy on stage since HIM played their last show at Tuska. Other than that though, I really enjoyed their set and I’d gladly check them out again sometime!
Overall, the March edition of Love Potion Club was an interesting one and I appreciated the diversity of artists on offer, for the extremely reasonable price of 7€. If you’re looking for a cute, nice little bar to see shows in that isn’t crammed in the busy downtown, Playhouse Bar is worth keeping an eye on. I’ve enjoyed myself every time I’ve been there!
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