Birthplace and date: 18 February 1988, Tammisaari Place of Residence: Helsinki Education: Sound engineer Family: Three sisters, mom, dad First record I bought was... Oh my! The very first? I can’t remember! I should probably check it out from my record shelf. Right now I’m reading... No Logo. Still. As a child I wanted to be... A singer. As a kid I told my mother, “Just to let you know, I’m going to be a singer.”

Singer-songwriter Frida Andersson’s star is not so much on the rise as it is shooting straight up. Last year she made a splash in the airwaves with her debut single Messed Up Little Kid. In September she released her first album, a compilation of beautiful country and soul-tinged songs, written by Andersson herself and top Finnish tunesmiths like Teemu Brunila and Anna Eriksson.

Besides her angelic features, honeyed vocals and enchanting stage presence, Andersson’s determination and passion for music have made the young artist one of the most promising newcomers to enter the talent-hungry Finnish pop scene. Next up, the 21-year-old Finland-Swedish songstress is gearing up to take on the rest of the Nordic countries.

You recently performed in a prison. What was that about?

It was organised by Bumerang, a programme on Radio X3M. I went over and ten prisoners were sitting in the audience, and everybody was wearing Santa hats. It was a really intimate gig, I did around seven songs. I remember that after the first song one of the prisoners was crying and left the room. At first I was just wondering, what’s going on here? But then I thought it’s actually really wonderful that he was so moved by the music. It was a nice gig, only a bit strange.

Your native tongue is Swedish but you make songs in English. Why is that?

I feel it’s only natural. When I listen to music I practically only listen to English stuff. And it would feel strange to sing in Finnish, since it’s not my first language. I did write one song in Swedish, but English comes more naturally to me at the moment.

Is your family very musical?

Oh yes. I’ve sung with my father and my sisters ever since I was a little kid; our mother is the only one who doesn’t sing. I co-wrote a song on the album with my father. He was, and still is, a touring troubadour. In the 1970s he sang in a duo together with his brother: they were called Uffe & Bosse. In fact, I spent a lot of my childhood on stage with my father.

So I guess you don’t suffer from stage fright, then?

No, not really. I’ve always figured that even the worst thing that could happen isn’t really that bad. You can always make a joke of it and laugh it off. It’s only human to make mistakes.

The inner world of man has interested philosophers since ancient times. Plato thought the soul to be the organ of experience, Aristotle studied it in De Anima, and Descartes proclaimed “I think, therefore I am” in the 1600s – a realisation that has been distorted ever since. For a long time, philosophy was the authority on mental matters.

Up until the 1850s the human mind was conceived to be something beyond scientific observation. The idea of a Cartesian soul was first shaken by the phrenologists in the early 1800s, who believed that the human mind was a biological phenomenon to be studied by...

Dan-Olof Riska has worked in physics for 40 years. In a distinguished international career which saw him hold an Assistant Professorship in the USA at the age of 27, he is now Director of the Helsinki Institute of Physics and vice-chairman of CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research based near Geneva.

SIX DEGREES met with Riska at the Physics Campus in Helsinki’s Kumpula district for a chat about the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

How did you first become interested in physics, and what impact has it had in your life?

Immigration is rapidly changing the face of Finland’s cities, but it’s also transforming its countryside. For a “New Finn” fitting into the quaint rural lifestyle can be tricky but rewarding.

Beautiful scenery, carefree summers and proper, snowy winters, and a community that values you as an individual – these are the advantages of living in the Finnish countryside, according to Petri Rinne. Rinne is the Managing Director of Joutsenten Reitti, a development agency working with the rural municipalities of Sastamala, Huittinen, Punkalaidun and Hämeenkyrö, and he passionately believes in the power of immigration to transform the Finnish countryside.

With two albums of piano-driven pop songs, singer-songwriter Astrid Swan has gone from a sassy indie princess to an edgy and ambitious artist. Now she wants to have a bit of fun and make music that the world would hear.

Four years ago Astrid Swan broke into the Finnish music scene as a solo artist with a most auspicious beginning. Her debut album Poverina caused ripples on both sides of the Atlantic and established her as the piano-stroking girl poet with an edge. On the follow- up, Spartan Picnic, Swan transformed into something altogether more mercenary. The belligerent and severe album earned her again more praise and more forays abroad.

In 2003, UK electro artist M.I.A. initiated an international tsunami whose waves of crossover global music are currently hitting Finnish dance floors. However, the roots of these rhythms lay deep in the society they emerged from and bear political meaning beyond mere entertainment value.

Whether it’s Eastern European Balkan beat, Brazilian baile funk or Tanzanian bongo flava, a refreshing wave of beats from beyond the usual bastions of club music is gaining momentum. It is world music armed with 808 drum machines and booming bass lines, fit for a block party from Manila to Mexico City. Although these styles are mainly known to Western audiences for their wild beats and crazy lyrics, most of them harbour a deeper social or political dimension.

Academic unemployment is rising and it’s increasingly difficult for many new graduates to find work suited for their degree. A generation of overeducated drifters wait tables and man check-out counters, stuck in job market limbo.

Anne Tarvainen is perhaps a fairly typical social sciences graduate, at least when it comes to working. Having spent ten years reading for a Master’s degree in communication, she is currently employed as a storage worker in a warehouse. For Tarvainen, working and studying concomitantly has been the norm.

Bottling her talent for the 
Finnish pop audience

CHISU has officially arrived on the Finnish pop music scene. Her sophomore album, Vapaa ja yksin (Free and Alone), is undoubtedly one of the freshest-sounding Finnish pop albums of this year. With her mature and poetic lyrics touching on a diversity of topics such as the recession, unemployment, depression and even swine flu, the Finnish public are sitting up and taking notice of the artist formally known as Christel Sundberg.

Driven forward by technological innovation and spectacle, the next revolution in modern cinema is heralded by the progress of digitalisation and a renewed interest in 3D motion pictures.

After several promising attempts by a string of Hollywood studios, the release dates of a spate of films utilising enhanced 3D technology have appeared on the horizon. While Pixar’s latest animated feature Up was able to add a compelling plot to computer-generated 3D animation, the true landmark production is about to be released, ushering in a new age of 3D.

While initially applauded for being more environmentally sound than its paper predecessor, the plastic bag now provides one of the biggest headaches for environmental groups.

A much-parodied scene in 1999’s Academy Award winning film American Beauty sees one of the main characters overwhelmed by the simple beauty of a plastic bag as it dances in the wind. But what of his reaction when the plastic bag is eventually washed down the drain and spat out to sea, wreaking havoc upon marine life? With baited breath we’ll have to wait for the sequel, American Beauty 2: Beauty Runs Ocean Deep.