Desert Planet (band)

Desert Planet
Desert Planet playing at Assembly '08
Background information
Origin	Lapland, Finland
Genres	bitpop
Years active	1999 - present
Labels	Stupido Records 9pm Records
Associated acts	Screaming Timbermen
Website	Official Site
Members
Jukka Tarkiainen Jari Mikkola Antti Hovila

Desert Planet is a band performing electronic music influenced by 8-bit video games, coin operated games and science fiction movies. Usually this type of music is called bitpop or micromusic. The band comes from Lapland, northern Finland and the members are Jukka Tarkiainen, Jari Mikkola and Antti Hovila.

Desert Planet has been active since 1999. At first it was a solo project by Jukka Tarkiainen. Jari Mikkola joined the group in 2001 after directing a music video for the title song of the first album "Asteroid Hopper". In 2003 Desert Planet released an album "Joystick Pop" through a label called ODOR, a sub-label of the Universal Music Group. In late 2004 the band signed a recording deal with a German label 9pm-records, who have a distribution for their releases in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. At the same time Desert Planet also made a deal with Stupido records in Finland, who take care of record releases in Scandinavia. In December 2005 the band was given the "Artist of the year" award by the Arts Council of Lapland because of their innovative music, creative web appearance and do-it-yourself music exporting. In May 2007 Desert Planet released a USB memory stick called "Aska-Osaka Virtual Highway" packed with multimedia and music. The Japan spirited USB-stick music release was the first of a kind in Finland^{[citation needed]}.

Desert Planet create electronic music in the spirit of 80's video games, but the style is not chiptunes or minimal 8-bit music. It is rather electronic dance music or electro pop with inluences from 80's game consoles and computers like Nintendo Entertainment System, Amiga and Commodore 64. Their music videos and live performances are presenting the band with a b-class science fiction aesthetics. The live performance is a space themed show with pixellated video projections presented by VJ Antti Hovila.

Discography

Albums

• Asteroid Hopper (Dese 001, 2001)
• Joystick Pop (Odor, 2003)
• Turbo Tellytunes (Dese 002, 2004)
• Mario Built My Hot Rod (9pm-records/Stupido Records, 2005, released in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Finland.)
• Moonrocks (9pm-records/Stupido Records, 2008, released in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Finland.)

Other

• Dune Buggy (Odor, 2002, Single)
• Aska-Osaka Virtual Highway ( Dese 003, 2007, USB flash drive memory stick)

External links

• The Desert Planet homesite
• 9pm Records
• Stupido records
• MySpace