YES, Finland is a strange old place - stuck up in the far Northern corner of the continent, speaking a language that bears no relation to any major European tongue, sandwiched between Russia and the rest of the world. The biggest group ever to come out of here was The Leningrad Cowboys. Everyone drinks Woodpecker cider. Even old grannies use mobile phones. The most fervent dance craze is not techno, but tango. Every Summer over 100,000 people gather at place called Seinäjoki for the tango equivalent of Tribal Gathering. Strange. "The spiritual connection is quite close between Helsinki and St Petersburg," explains Valera Lakoff of the New Composers. The two cities are also geographically close, and Finns and Russians can travel back and forth with few of the visa difficulties anyone but Finns have in going to Russia, or that Russians have going anywhere but Finland. "Helsinki is our connection to the West," he adds.
Shaven- headed and heavy- browed, with black leather jacket and turtle- neck sweater, Valera looks like Yul Brynner playing a submarine captain. He and the other New Composer, Igor Ver, have known each other since childhood. In 1983, when Igor got a job as a sound operator in a theatre, the pair began playing around with a couple of reel- to- reel tapes and assorted sound archives. "To mix up different styles of music with technical dialogue, like space talking, plus effects and industrial noises - this was the opening idea of the New Composers." They made "science music" for the Leningrad planetarium, and ran a club night in the basement. They sent a tape to Brian Eno, who, intrigued, came over to meet them. This led to them spending a few months in England in 1990, where they recorded 'Sputnik', the first Russian house track, for Ark Records of Liverpool. "Our friends from Britain were the first people to help Russian artists," says Valera. "A big, big thank you to them."
Back in the USSR it was collapsing communism, mafia mayhem and money, money, money. "That period was very disgusting, in a very heavy way." Still unable to release anything through the early '90s, Valera and Igor used the time to learn. "Before we were only collagists. Now we work more as normal composers - with singers, or making soundtracks." Not that there are any singers on their current stuff - only trumpeting elephants, robot voices and porn video samples. Some of it is their reworking of material given to them by Brian Eno, who has been living in St Petersburg while working on an installation at the Russian Museum. "Of course, whether it's released is up to him. But I feel we are now in the right moment."