Isthmus Recordings Launches as Live Archive for Helsinki’s Toinen kerros

Helsinki’s experimental music scene has a new documentarian. Isthmus Recordings, based in Helsinki and Venice, launches with two releases drawn from Toinen kerros, a community-run space that has quietly become a hub for sonic practice in the Finnish capital. The label doubles as an archive for performances recorded at the venue, and its Bandcamp proceeds go directly back into keeping the space running.

The first document, Kesän korvalla, captures a May 2025 duo set by sound artist J. Koho and percussionist Minna Koskenlahti. Across 35 minutes, the pair work with amplified concrète sounds, mallet percussion, and wooden flutes, moving from frantic but controlled percussion into a drone-heavy middle before a wind-led climax. The piece resolves into metallic textures that slow into ambience—structured more like a weather system than a composition.

The second release pairs a duo by Mark Reid Bulatović and Simone Spampinato with a solo rendition of Fredrik Rasten’s Lineament. Both pieces center on acoustic guitars in uncommon tunings, played against room atmosphere rather than processing. On “Ballad Broadcast,” the recording carries accidental noise—doors, footsteps, shutters—which fills the space between sparse guitar dialogues. Rasten’s Lineament, a live version of his 2023 studio album, keeps guitar arpeggios at the center.

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