Muovipussi: a band from the year 3000
For six years now, with the beginning of spring, the Peculiar Family Festival in Split, Croatia, has awakened again. There aren’t many circus festivals in Croatia, but thanks to a few enthusiasts, this oversight has been changed. The backbone of the festival is the people, from visitors to performers. But this year was somewhat special; the entire programme took place in public spaces across the city. The festival came to the people, to the audience, back to the streets. The days of the festival felt like blazing summer with a colourful and international programme for children, adults, and everyone in between. The audience was hungry for a manifestation like this, which is chronically missing in Croatia. In this article, my main focus will be on the last performance of the festival, the band Muovipussi.
Where to start, how can I explain this band? Let’s start with facts. Muovipussi is an electronic, metal, pop, rap, and punk band from Finland formed by Milla Lahtinen, Niklas Blomberg, and Heidi Finnberg in 2018. Like most bands, their beginning started with a rehearsal. Friends randomly jamming together in a studio and having fun. All three have a background in music, from singing to playing instruments. This might sound straightforward enough, but there is nothing typical about Muovipussi.
The Muovipussi trio is a rare experience. The name in Finnish means plastic bag. Inside that plastic bag, you will find firecrackers with instruments. Sometimes on stage, their outfit involves plastic bags; sometimes it doesn’t. Their aesthetics go hand in hand with their music and performance, and their mantra seems to be: let’s play with all of it. Their appearance was the first thing I noticed before the performance began. All three of them looked like teenagers who simultaneously enjoy girly pop and death metal music. But each of them had their own aesthetic expression. These three strong and different personalities have known each other since high school, and their intimacy is the fruit of years of bonding. This confidence in allowing themselves to push their own physical limits is palpable on stage, where they playfully seem to push each other through complicity and humour.
As they say, it’s okay to collide sometimes. That is the point; that collision brings creativity and artistry, which you can definitely recognise in their music. They play with sounds, words, and physical expression combined. It’s not uncommon to hear a hardcore, aggressive melody with sweet and gentle lyrics. This curiosity and the absence of fear to experiment is exactly what makes Muovipussi unique.
The show started softly and plushly. Pink dress, shirt, jacket, ponytail, a guy with a hat behind a synthesiser. They entered the stage and greeted the audience with a cute, almost shy ‘Good evening’ and ‘Thank you for inviting us’. An innocent smile on their faces; for the first minute, everything was normal. Niklas is behind the synth, Heidi is playing the bass, and Milla is holding the microphone. What a nice trio, I thought to myself: this is going to be a pleasant performance to end the festival; I am curious to see how they will combine all of these musical genres.
After the misleading, gentle, and calm intro, all hell broke loose in the best possible way. I wasn’t expecting anything like this performance. I have been to many punk, metal, and all the other genres' concerts, so I knew what kind of energy to expect, but this was something completely different. Most “regular” concerts deliver similar performances: loud singing, lots of guitars, drums, slam dancing - you know it will be pretty chaotic since you know what to expect.
Muovipussi's performance was chaotic and loud, but it had a certain unpredictable flow to it. This wasn’t some copy-pasted act done automatically; you could feel that they were truly having a great time performing together. If there were 3 or 3000 people in the audience, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Their energy spread all over us, and everyone was dancing, headbanging, and laughing. They are super professional performers who don’t take themselves too seriously, something which I appreciate a lot.
The band consists of three members, and the concert delivers three excellent acts, or unpredictable sequences. When Milla, a fragile Barbie girl with a big smile on her face, starts to sing, you will definitely hear her. She defines herself more as a vocalist rather than a singer; she has an impressive death growl voice and screams that will send a shiver down your spine like an electroshock wave. Her stage presence comes naturally through her circus skills, almost like it’s not rehearsed; awesome contortions, all kinds of twists, hanging in the air and climbing fences.
Heidi is the only band member without a circus background, but her stage presence is very circus-like, and it’s feral. I found her performance to be theatrical, which was an appealing addition to the whole concert. At first glance, Niklas seems like a boy who enjoys baseball and video games, but if you look closer through his fluo-pastel nerd attitude, his appearance hides the temperament of a geeky sound engineer. I found him to be a true musical chameleon, a one-of-a-kind energy ball that takes over the stage. I enjoyed his physical presence and his trippy sound design.
All three together represent one full-bodied artist, unique and eccentric. They are crazy, in the best way, without inhibitions and boundaries. What I saw at the Peculiar Families Festival in Split was an adorable and diabolical Finnish trio screaming dadaistic lyrics accompanied by punchy synth beats, electronic and punk lunacy, machine-gun rapping and growling, all spiced up with a great sense of humour. These three witches of sweet darkness offer performance, music, and laughter; after their show, you will ask yourself: What did I just experience? And that is exactly what they want.
This review is published as one of the results of The Review Lab, a workshop held in Split by Around About Circus during the Peculiar Families Festival 2025 edition, thanks to DUSC and Room100.
To know more about the festival, read the review by Mia Bradić, Outdoor stages and audiences' behaviours: from reality to fiction in the city of Split
