18 years on, Tallinn Music Week shows who keeps a music scene alive

This shutting up shop after almost two decades of business in Estonia marked the last of the “big three” major labels to close operations in the Baltics, after Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment departed the region in 2024 as part of a wider “cut to grow” strategy aiming to improve global efficiency.

If all of this sounds as though these labels’ final releases should be death knells for the Baltic music industry, fear not. In almost the exact same timeframe that Universal Music Estonia had managed to last, Tallinn Music Week (TMW) has only continued to grow in scope and in global recognition as an ecosystem of artists and organisations doing things for themselves and doing it their way. Last week saw the festival and conference’s 18th edition, where its model of delegating stage curation to labels, export offices, festivals, radio stations, “nomadic platforms” and other similarly zealous yet distinct music associations, felt especially apt at reminding us of the real workings of a thriving music industry from the ground up.

Place and sound have always been thoughtful companions in Estonia, from the arched structure of its Song Festival Grounds that once reverberated the Singing Revolution throughout the Baltics, to the forest of Laulasmaa (“Singing Land”), where the bright and spacious Arvo Pärt Centre is built with timber walls that curve like a continuous melody and steel columns that punctuate like a musical bar and mirror the surrounding pine grove. For Tallinn Music Week, there is no better home for its community of tastemakers than Telliskivi, a creative hub that repurposes old train factories into bars, venues, restaurants, studios, practice spaces, and label headquarters. It has a pinch of Berlin’s grittiness mixed with a dash of the hip, commercial sheen of Manchester’s Northern Quarter; more importantly, it is a compact area to easily experience much of the new music on offer over the three days.

Experience is the key word here, because honestly, TMW has some particularly left-field curation to get stuck into – not least Muovipussi. Closing Thursday night at the restaurant F-hoone for the inaugural Welcome To Finland showcase, this trio – though troupe feels more accurate – creates a sense of eerie bemusement far more immersively than just a kooky getup. There are enough pauses that it stops feeling like a musical act at some points, but when their operatic voices do lock in above glitchy techno beats, they do so with control that is impressive and yet not nearly as spectacular as their physical mastery, contorting backwards into an arch to play a drum pad, or a leg behind the head for some backing vocals.

On Saturday the same venue hosts the Vikendica showcase, now in its third iteration at TMW and put on by Yugofuturism, a platform aimed at helping bands from the Baltics and Balkans tour in Western Europe and vice versa – a fixer of sorts in the region with a reputation for unpredictable but loosely post-punk adjacent billing that has earned its busy crowd on the last night of the festival. I said it was unpredictable, but Estonia’s own Mikhel Kuusk is still a surprising opener. There’s something “sweet, gooey, and warm” to this one-man project, as he sings on “KISSELL” over a fizzing synth-pop track dedicated to a thickened fruit drink popular in the region. Live drums and synth multi-tasking make up for what seems like a hefty amount of vocal backing track, but there is a kind of melodramatic meta element to this hip thrusting, singalong show that makes even this feel intentional. Closing track “SUSANNA” repeats just one word for four minutes, but it’s a Washed Out-like chillwave ballad that’s been stuck in my head since.

This playfulness is turned up to max later as Warsaw’s absurdist duo vgtbl.pl hit us with their maximalist, pumping Eurotrash that has earnt them a cult status at home and on the European festival circuit over the last year. But the mood shifts with far more gravitas as Barcelona’s Los Sara Fontan’s visceral rhythms seem to break, trill, and pounce as if reacting spontaneously to the layers of deep synth bass and distorted slashes of violin. The off beats and small sonic quirks add a kind of nervous ticking to the overarching brooding post-rock sound, with drummer Edi Pou hitting one of the venue’s steel columns at one point for dynamic detail. The violin is also the tool used by Estonian Maarja Nuut to dissociative effect on Friday at a showcase put on by experimental Baltic music festivals Üle Heli and Skanu Mežs, a set that feels more like witnessing the weaving and unfolding of tapestries than a concert per se.

TMW isn’t just about the offbeat edges of the underground, though. At the gallery Fotografiska, the pearl of Telliskivi, a showcase hosted by the non-profit Jazz Estonia puts together an especially classy evening. Glasses of bubbly clink and effervesce fittingly as Aÿ-en-Champagne’s own Léon Phal flitters up and down his saxophone. One of France’s buzziest jazz musicians, Phal and his band set a vibe in the crowd that feels unmatched for the rest of the festival, with masterful solos embellishing seemingly simple melodies to seriously smooth effect, as on “Stress Killer”. Dressed in their Stoneys and Stussys, next act Omasta are unlikely looking jazz cats, and yet the soft subtone of their trumpet recalls the smoky jazz club greats, though J Dilla-fied with lagging beats and a fat sounding bass. The Krakow quintet is also one of its country’s brightest acts from a well-burgeoned jazz scene, and this double bill on Friday night feels like a treat.

On a stage hosted by Music Cities Network, a growing international association aiming to strengthen the link between music scenes and policy makers, there is plenty of easy listening to enjoy. There’s a goosebump chill to the soft rasp of Icelandic singer-songwriter RAKEL’s voice, not least when she sings “We’ve been sitting on the couch for minutes / Minutes that turned into hours” on “Pillows”; sitting on sofas ourselves in slippers (a venue house policy), it feels like we’re sharing in this intimacy. The performance contrasts neatly with Tallinn’s own Alonette, whose dreamy Americana-tinged songs would place her comfortably on a sunny afternoon at Green Man or End of the Road festivals. Listening to a song like “Uneasy”, it’s a sin that she’s not listed on those bills.

Likewise, expect shoegazer mariin k.’s riff-centric shoegaze to rally more international followers in the coming year. Once the guitarist in the London outfit Wyldest, Mariin Kallikorm has a particular knack for hooks that catch and lead but don’t burst the dreamy bubble coming from the rest of the band. Their show at Paavli Kultuurivabrik, a little further north of Telliskivi, is a delight, with young fans screaming at the front and making heart shapes with their hands.

With so many international tastemakers, agents, bookers and all sorts of music professionals on hand – there are 169 conference speakers alone this year – it’s likely mariin k. will have bagged herself some more festival spots across the continent. But opportunities here are not just for the artists. Back in Telliskivi, besides a padel court and a construction site of a new urban spa, are the headquarters of two independent labels with very different characters and curation, but ultimately with a shared determination for the country’s music industry. Estonian Funk Embassy is a music house and label for contemporary artists spanning the funk spectrum, from the sleek retro-soul of Rita Ray to Haldi & ans Flamingo, who melds disco with a warm and dreamy ’70s sound akin to contemporaries like Dina Ögon. Internationally, they’re best known for their compiling and re-releasing of archival disco and funk music once lost behind the Iron Curtain; the Groove of ESSR compilations are a must-listen for the cratedigger types.

The whole project essentially came about a decade ago when “Funk Ambassador” Henrik Ehte, then a music journalist, was approached by local band Lexsoul Dancemachine, who urgently needed someone to represent them at Tallinn Music Week. The Funk Embassy was born, turning from management into a label and now a comprehensive music house. “I have even thought to myself, how come I mention Tallinn Music Week every time there’s an interview about the Funk Embassy?,” Ihte tells me. “Now that you mention it, it’s been at the root of basically everything for me.”

International distribution and European PR representation are just two examples of concrete business connections gained at TMW that Ihte cites off the top of his head. With the major labels gone, there are opportunities for indies such as the Funk Embassy not just to scoop up dropped artists, but also to obtain more of the wider market and offer it as a business service. None know this better than kurvad uudised (“sad news”), a group of friends who decided to create their label one morning over breakfast gin and tonics, so the story goes.

Where the Funk Embassy remembers the past, kurvad uudised seem to specialise in irreverent and hyper modern pop and club music styles. There are a few exceptions, such as the indie-rock band The Boondocks, but among the label’s most hyped acts are the art-pop singer maria kallatsu, rave heads triibupasta, and boypeperoni, an extremely in-demand producer and DJ who one wired fan tells me is “carrying the Estonian music industry on his shoulders right now.”

The label calls itself a “Major/Minor”; most of the founders worked for the majors at one point, one of them even helping to bring Universal to the Baltics in the first place. “He’s also the guy responsible for Universal leaving the Baltics too,” they all laugh. They all have a dry, bordering-on-nihilistic style of humour, which, professionally, translates to a direct approach of offering artists more independence and chances to take risks, in exchange for more of a 360 share than just a master deal. “We have to have some control over things like bookings or merch deals,” co-founder Erik Kammiste explains. “That’s how we actually make the money back. Eventually, it’s about trying to keep the business operating. I think it’s feasible to do what we do financially, but at the same time, we do sacrifice a lot of our free time and time with the family. So yeah, it’s definitely something we started as a joke but isn’t funny anymore.”

Estonian Funk Embassy and kurvad uudised have carved their niches as a full-service operation for artists that share their ideals and identities, and with young, digital and industry literate staff behind them, have an agility and freedom in doing so. Both won similar awards at the beginning of the year from different organisations: Record Label of the Year at the Kuldne Plaat (“Golden Disk”) and Production Company of the Year at the Estonian Music Industry Awards, respectively. As such, there’s a playful rivalry between them, similarly wry smiles when discussing each other. But Estonia is a tiny nation, and ultimately they both share a hunger to strengthen its industry and put its music on the map; with both lacking the international heft of the departed majors, Tallinn Music Week therefore becomes a vital way of opening up this network.

Generally speaking, the Baltic countries have for several years now leant increasingly in favour of music sung in their respective languages, as artists prefer to dominate their own territory as well as playing into a strong tradition of cultivating their own cultural identities post Soviet occupation. But many young musical entrepreneurs such as Estonian Funk Embassy and kurvad uudised equate this with complacency. “It’s a very basic human nature thing,” says Ihte, “the more you have of something, the less you appreciate it. Since there’s so few of us, it’s oftentimes not too difficult to feel special in Estonia. I think that’s true for both the artists and the industry people.” For Ihte, the feeling of getting lost in cities the size of New York or London is an important way of recalibrating goals. “I feel like there’s such a mass of people that I’m actually not that important. And I take that feeling as a very useful way of reminding myself that you’re not all that and there are always ways to improve.”

“Bang on,” agrees Kammiste. “I feel like in a way we have conquered the Estonian market, but that doesn’t allow for complacency because we have to keep up a standard for ourselves and the music we put out.”

Of course, nothing is guaranteed from simply attending a few panels or networking drinks and exchanging business cards or Instagram accounts. The work comes after the fact. Superkomfort is the solo project of Yaroslav Goryaev, who is playing his first Tallinn Music Week through its apply-to-play scheme. His set on Thursday evening is an eccentric highlight, as pounding bass slaps and icy dark-wave synths collide with a raw house-party energy, recalling the Skins era greats à la Crystal Castles or Late of the Pier. Over the next few days I catch him taking notes at panels, nervously approaching speakers, and I even spot him eagerly pitching his project at an after-after party at a speakeasy in the early hours of Sunday morning. The majors might have left Estonia, but for an industrious artist or music professional willing to put the work in, there are few better spaces to foster excitement, independence, and genuine opportunity than Tallinn Music Week.