Just wanted to share my girl-pride with you guys. I made myself my very first choker. I actually made myself something different as well, but I’m gonna show it off at the Estonian Music Awards.

I feel like such a girl at the moment. I think that it kinda sucks though that I needed to become a twenty-something before I could feel like a girl. In my teenage years I despised girly stuff. Mostly because I thought that there were better and way more important stuff to think about than style and such (silly nonsense). And I was right. Really, I was.

My life in a nutshell

But because I totally denied myself dwelling into fashion and girly silliness, I also denied myself the art of being pretty (especially in the rough teenage years when I had acne and baby fat and when I thought that my head looked like an unfortunate potato, but I didn’t notice the fact that my hair-do made it look like that). Which kinda resulted in never feeling pretty. Which itself caused more thinking about being pretty, which then again made me feel shame about thinking about such “stupid” things. And so the spiral went on as in the end I was never happy with the way I looked. Nor could I pull off any look, even at those rare times, when I wanted to. And of course as I was a feminist in despair I thought that all the girls/guys who take care of their looks are just doing it for the opposite sex , which for me was like selling out in the real world. I still don’t agree with making myself pretty just for guys, but I don’t judge girls/guys who do that anymore, because there can be so much more to those kinds of behaviors that we might not be able to see at first and I think that eventually we are designed to do that as species and we all will (hopefully) grow out of it.

Anyways. My point is – young peeps (who feel like I felt), don’t deny yourself the feeling of looking awesome, even if there are way more important things to think about. It is not shameful to care about how we look- it can be means of self-expression, and it plain helps in life if you’re looking groomed. Plus it just darn makes you feel good. Of course we don’t have to over-do it with over-consumption, but analyzing our appearances and keeping our bodies and faces clean and pampered can make any person feel better about themselves. So fu*k being insecure about your looks and do something about it, you know you want to! It’s not weakness to look feminine or show some skin if you want to for the esthetics of it . It’s not weakness to want to look good- it’s useful resourcing.

“It is illegal for women to go topless in most cities, yet you can buy a magazine of a woman without her top on at any 7-11 store. So, you can sell breasts, but you cannot wear breasts, in America.”-Violet Rose

Madonna did it well and got rich

This does not mean that I don’t think that women and men are being over-sexualized and needlessly hailed by unrealistic beauty measures in the media. They are, but it doesn’t mean that dressing up and feeling sexy (and going to parties and having material well-fare and almost (!) everything that Chris Brown sings about) is wrong. The only thing that the media is doing wrong is not showing enough of the other sides of living a good life like being an intelligent and independent person with interesting thoughts.

Boobs

I guess my “fu*k double standards, I just wanna feel pretty for myself” tips are:

Wash your hair(and yourself , if you haven’t yet. You can do it everyday once if you want to and don’t listen to my grandmother talking about your hair getting so damaged that it will fall off. It won’t. And it will, but it does so naturally because hair changes after every 4 years.

Mmm, I bet my toes taste like strawberries now

Materials and clothing cuts (?? how the clothes are made) are more important than matching colors.

Anna Piaggi for example is awesome and she wore it all. But notice how all the clothing items she’s wearing are from different materials that compliment each other. With artsy layering she seems to pull of any color-scheme. Warning: trying to copy her style can be very dangerous and have results of looking like a clown (cos there will never be another Anna Piaggi). But then again, some people like clowns.[/caption]

You can wear make-up every day when you take it off in the evening (again grandmother, you were wrong). If you’re a boy, you can do it as well, I think that men don’t have to look rough to be manly.

You can dress up every day if you have the time and the mood for it (and if your school/work allows it).If you like something and you think it looks good on you then heck yea you can wear it. Beauty is subjective, don’t let other people decide on your beauty when you can do it yourself.

Watching what you eat to keep your plate of food balanced just makes you feel better physically and mentally.

It’s okay to go with trends and and such if you want to, you don’t have to always invent everything yourself, plus it can  help your own style-creating process later -on.

Pretty clothes don’t have to be expensive, second-hands are cool for lots of unique pieces, plus it saves the Earth a little to have clothes travel between owners rather than making new ones all the time. Having lots of different choices though kinda helps in the style-game.

It’s good to not cut corners on stuff like- really good reliable boots in the winter, a really good winter-coat, a good well-fitting bra (if you’re a girl or a boy who likes bras), One pair of really nice shoes that go well with everything (in my case – BOOTS, baby). A good gentle make-up remover that fits your skin type. A good well-fitting suit (ideally made for you) if you’re a boy or a girl who likes suits.

Mmmm, men in well fitting suits is almost like porn for women.

It’s also good to have some essential stuff that doesn’t have to be expensive: a little black dress, white and black t-shirts and tank tops, a good pair of black pants, underwear and socks (you can’t get more essential than that), decent make-up (if you’re into that).

So, that’s what I think. I’m pretty sure I missed something, you can add stuff to that list if you think of anything.

Touching my cheek, yo. Like a wannabe weeaboo should.

So anyways, I felt pretty and I made selfies. No shame for the selfies.

Take care of your bodies, babes. You don’t need no (other) body, when you got your own body (my rendition of a Justin Bieber song.)

We are all beautiful!

We’re all magical beings, yo.

Pfft, girliest post EVAA!

Pew pew pew!

I.

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Special thanks to Toomas Olljum, Kaspar Brandt, Hando Jaksi, Andzei Matsukevits and all the people who made “Weirdo” video happen!
Listed here:
Production Company: Contrast Eye & Motion
Producers: Triinu Jalakas, Liisi Kõvasild
Director: Andzei Matsukevits
Dop: Alvar Kõue
Art Director: Jaagup Roomet
1st AD: Sander Allikmäe
1st AC: Joosep Kask, Karlis Jaunzems
B-camera: Alex Kosutic
Edited by: Andzei Matsukevits
Color grade: Maksim Golomidov
Gaffers: Venno Kornak, Ants Tammik
Make up: Kristiina Praks, Iiris Lunin, Maie Heidemann
Costume: Kristel Jänes, Liisa Chiristlin Saleh, Kätlin Kikkas

Catering:
Anu Abro, Andres Abro

Assistants:
Ott Kelpman, Ranno Kallas; Triin Valvas, Kristel Muiste, Ardi
Ilves, Tom Pallok

Cast:
Mart Kampus, Triinu Paomets, Timo Tuuling, Leo Mürkhein, Evi Sinik,
Aleksander Paia, Ralf Klooster, Tomas Tammemets, Elina Karpats

Thanks to:
Riisipere mõis, Hendrik Saks, Ramirent, Rock Cafe, Martin Kuut, Kaspar
Brandt, Viktoria Bojarova, Johannes Arro, RedRent, Meelis Veeremets,
Event Center, Volmer Kliimand, Helen Ehandi, Shooters, CJ Kask,
Widescreen, Catapult, Kristjan Saar,
Mart-Matteus Kampus, Kärt Väinola, Hele Lilleorg, Kätlin Laiv, Daniel
Müntinen, USS Security, Tarmo Hõbe

Woop!

Cats!

The post Yay I’ve been nominated for 5 Estonian Music Awards! appeared first on Iiris.

Hope You had some awesome holidays!

So today on December 27nd I’m gonna do a live chat at the usual http://bambuser.com/channel/Iirismusic at 23.00 (EET), because three marks the spot!

It’s gonna be after the broadcast of R2 live, which you can see at 22:05 here: http://otse.err.ee/etv2/

I’m really nervous about the R2 live. Glob knows what I did there. I hate watching my live performances, because if I’m bothered by something I can’t take it back. But it’s a necessity for improvement.

I chose to do the live-chat  on Bambuser, because as I started to make a Google + account for the artist-mini-me, something really ticked me off about it (product thing here and there) and I kinda left the organizing bit too much on the last minute (cos Holidays!! Wee!) . So i decided, the heck with it!3 is a nice number to have on an account I’ll try the google + thing out in  2013 (I ‘m gonna make an account there anyhow, connection is important these days).

(Note: this picture is faked. I didn’t really kiss the cat, he licks his anus with his pie hole)

Hah, taking pictures of myself always feels like this to me…
…silly. But I get over it and do it anyhow.

Can’t wait to talk to you before this year ends!

Lots of warmth and fuzzy feelings!
I.

The post End of the year chat! appeared first on Iiris.

Melyse for me is about a girl having a warning dream, but going through with the action anyway and then understanding that intuition can sometimes be bloody accurate and not listening to it can deliver a fatal blow to your ego and mental health.

The song started from the little melody in the beginning and throughout the song, which is played by the hand in the drawer in the video (It’s Kostja’s hand!). At first I wanted to make a gloomy emo-song based on the melody (yep, it was that kind of a time for me), but when Ago(the mad scientist/producer of TMGB) and I started to develop it in his home studio, it took a wholly different and a more exciting direction.A big part of how the song came to be as it is now, is the fact that we had too many slow songs already. I’m the queen of ballads, 80% of the songs I write are ballads. It has gotten better though.

The first demo had some dummy-lyrics in it I think, back in 2009/2010. It definitely wasn’t a song that came out all at once and it was heavily layered from the beginning. But it got even more complicated in the final production (I dare you to try and count all the different instruments on this song and I bet thatyou still would not get it right, because loads of instruments themselves are layered, yippikayey!).

I wanted to have water in the video, because it symbolizes the mind. The bath was supposed to be the portal to your subconscious, to a different world inside. In my very first ideas I wanted to have just one world with a lake and everything happening there, but since we were shooting late October/early November, then spending many days in the freezing lake water outside would have cost me my children,Andzei ( Andzei Matsukevitś, the brilliant director of both “Melyse” and “Weirdo” you can see his work here: http://www.andzei.com/home ) and Vanaisa (the OP of Melyse you can find his work here: http://www.vanaisa.ee/videos/ )thought of various places where I could travel with the bathtub. At first we also thought about the Gorilla chasing me through the dreamworlds, but we dumped that idea, cos we didn’t find a really life-like gorilla suit and we had loads of information to put into the video anyhow.

The video has a different plot then the song does. In the video Melyse heeds the warning in her dreams and decides to cut off the red string of fate tied to her finger which symbolically represents her feelings towards the Gorilla.

The shooting took 4 days and some nights. Andzei had put together an awesome small team of people really passionate about their work and enthusiastic about the project. I would like to thank  everyone again who were involved in the making of this video, because this video couldn’t have come out the way it did without the hard work and effort everyone put into making it!

Being in a video isn’t really very hard. Sure, there’s a lot of waiting and sometimes it can be a bit cold outside, but the hardest part is making the video. The crew on the shooting of the video had to be on the set all the time-always ready and prepared.And all the peeps involved were really cool and chill people and wonderful individuals. I am truly lucky to have such a good first experience with making music videos.

The video was shot at an old prison from the Soviet Union, where they kept “the worst” criminals (murderers and too active people who didn’t agree with the government), at Türisalu pank, Maardu railway and at some farmers private land (there were cow-pies everywhere and we had to climb over a fence, but we asked permission).

The dress was made by the awesome Aldo Järvsoo (you can see his work here: http://www.embassyoffashion.com/Aldo_Jarvsoo.html) and it fit a whole under-water body suit under it so that I could take some baths outside.

It turned out that it wasn’t that cold to take a warm bath outside or in the basement of an old abandoned prison. The coldest moments were the railway shots, where my hair and face were sprayed with cold water and I didn’t have a body suit under the dress. After that location shoot I got really desperate to get the cold watery dress off of me and when I got stuck and the dress didn’t come off, I was so ready to knock on my (then not so familiar) neighbors door and ask: “Hello, I’m your neighbor, could you please help me get this dress off of me?”. Fortunately I got out of the dress at the last minute. The other coldest part was the hand-in-the-bath-dipping scene, where the water was ice-cold. Other than that the bath scenes were quite nice for me. Also, there was tea on the set, what more could you want?

You can see lots of pictures taken from the set by Jelena Rudi (who is awesome at capturing live moments) here: http://aleefoto.livejournal.com/103397.html

and here: http://aleefoto.livejournal.com/103630.html

The vid:

So! Have a happy 9th of December, folks! I’m celebrating with tea and making new music.

Lots of warmth!
I.

The post 1 year since Melyse appeared first on Iiris.

How have you all been? Sending waves from my cave here. Beep, beep, beep, blip.

Very soon gonna step out of my cave and reunite with the band to play an awesome show called R2 Live, which will be taken onto tape, so you may have a chance to see a bit of the live, even if yo’re not living in Estonia. Feeling excited about that.

I’ve been quite good. I’m gonna take some steps back to show pictures now.

Halloween is not celebrated in Estonia, but I was one of the lot, who used it as an excuse to dress up anyhow. So I dressed a bit witchy. The whole week. Witch bitch. I also had an office bitch with me (holler to my gf Triinu!)

BUt Johanna, my backvocalist/person with a real sense of style took it to another level with her Lana Del Rey impression.

If you wanna see more pictures of her just being drop dead gorgeous, watch them here: http://mikrofoon.blogspot.com/2012/11/selline-me-halloween.html

Then I had a little trip to the Netherlands, where I played at the lovely Meet Me Cassius show (but you all know about that, cos you follow me on facebook, don’t you…don’t you??)

You can see a little video of the performance here:  https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=509510539061930

The fourth Meet Me Cassius will take place on the 26th of January at Tivoli, Utrecht, and I really recommend going there. I sure got some good memories from my first visit to the Netherlands.

Since the gig in the Netherlands I’ve been a total hermit. I’ve been making songs, even made my very first song in estonian and collecting pictures to get a really big picture of things. Also listening to these three ladies (my heroes):

Missy Elliott (my new hero)

Amanda Fu*king Plamer

and Susanne Sundford

 Also, I’m almost a fully nocturnal creature now to get the most out of my tiger creativity potential. Life gets weird, if you see no daylight. But soon, it’s got to stop. I kinda miss the sun.

Also, found this on the internet, and all I can say is YES!

Gotta love Miyazaki.

End of report. Sending a motivational penguin and hoping you’re all doing well.

Peace!

I.

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 *

He came to me in a vivid dream and said:

“You are not a she or he or it

You are a no-man’s-land

And no more than what you can make of it

Become the air and you’ll control it

Become the fog and you’ll dissolve it

Become water and be transparent

Become the Earth and you will shape it

Become fire and you’ll indulge it

Become yourself and you’ll embrace it

Become reality and you will face it

Become time and you’ll be present”

And with those words of hope and glimmer

He placed upon me silver shimmers

Scales of a Fish

A mane of a Lion

A grasp for the abyss

and the flight of an Eagle

“You don’t need a house anymore

You have a home inside of you

You don’t need wealth or pretty things-

The pretty lingers in your limbs

The riches in your body’s cells

So live

Learn

Dance

Divide

Conquer

Your own

Space of mind

If all your actions you’re aware of

The dance of life graced and well-cared for

Then you’ll become more

Then you are now,

An illusive Dragon!”

Pow!

*

Pow! Pow!Pow! Puff!! Once again I don’t own the picture, nor did I make it. But I made the poem, so dragons must still a subject.

Have a happy flight!

I.

The post The story of becoming an Illusive Dragon. appeared first on Iiris.

This is the fabric, which is gonna be turned into a magic two-part soon (maybe even as we speak even).

Kelli Ali “Psychic Cat” from the album “Psychic Cat”. Lovin’ the whole album.

Favorite workout song at the moment.

Soon I’m gonna get away from this city and run to haunted houses with scientists chasing butterflies. I’m not kidding, the sea is near there as well.

by Saga Sig

How much more cooler can you get?

Minty horses - the only horses I prefer.

YES!

YES!

YES!

A picture I drew some time ago. Cats and dragons are still a subject I guess. And no, I didn’t draw the cats, I bought them and glued them to the picture so that the dragon would have more company.

This plus Radiohead Television makes for a trippy mix.

Have colorful August!

I.

(P.S, I don’t know the authors of most of these pictures and I disclaim them. I’m sharing cos I like them. Don’t sue me, pretty please)

The post Vibeszzz appeared first on Iiris.

So, what have I been up to since the last blogpost (ages ago)?

I’ve been living in my head and haven’t been documenting my doings. Lot’s of stuff has been happening and  loads of it you’ll never find out, but 16,51% of it is all yours, dear buddies from the internet. So let’s start at the possible beginning of the time that I remember when I didn’t document things.

07.07.2012 – Summer Sound Liepaja

The only picture that I have of this trip is this.

It was a lovely sunset, yep. Lieapaja Summer Sound is held on the beach, unfortunately it seems that June doesn’t want to be one of the summer months in Estonia, Latvia has it a bit better regarding temperature, but still, it seemed a bit too cold to swim yet.   Liepaja has a mad and awesome hotel called the Fontaine Palace where we stayed this year as well. Everything is kitch and there is a big lizard living in the halls. It used to be a really grey soviet-era block-building, but they’ve just gone wild with gypsum statues and mad colors everywhere and made it a really unique place to stay in.

Nobody really took pictures this time but here are some pics from last year. The Fontaine burger is still the best burger I’ve ever had.And also latvians are heart-warming and great party people. A shout-out to Joanna who helped me get to the festival-area!

14.07.2012 – The amazing awesomeness of Ilosaarirock at Joensuu.

It was one of the longest rides we have ever taken by bus, at some point St. Petersburg was at least as close as Helsinki. But it was definitely worth it, cos the concert experience for us was mind-blowing.

  tall people must suffer for their tallness

 brotha-sistah-ballette-yoga (and later ice-cream)

There used to be a street named after Chuck Norris, but it was changed because nobody crosses Chuck Norris and lives.

 Our backstage was niice!

 Pisi’s parents who are mad awesome came to see us and made this flag for us, which they couldn’t use unfortunately, for it was too grandiose for anyone to see over it waving in the front line.

 But there were so many people who came to see us and you made this gig one of the most memorable moments of my summer.Thank you! <3

 One of my favorite clothing items I own, custom made by Karolin Kuusik.

 Wraa!!!!

Kostja’s true faces

 Even our merch was on sale!!

We saw The XX from the back-stage side of the tent

The Hives: “Are You finnished yet???!”

15.07.2012 Driving back from Ilosaarirock

My crew is sweet! They woke up early and got me an early printsessikakku for my b-day.

And then a long ride home and another meet-up at our constant hang-out place – the Helsinki-Tallinn ferry.


Pictures taken by Eetu Ahanen http://ilosaarirock2012.eetuahanen.com/iiris/

and by Hando(oken!)

More pictures from the live here:  http://sussan.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Concerts+and+events/Ilosaarirock+2012/Iiris/

One picture taken from here: http://www.soundi.fi/node/14437

16.07.2012 My birthday!

Had a little party, had cool friends over, was awesome, ate pizza, was awesome, got awesome presents, was awesome.Awsome, awesome, awesome.

Also, a big thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday to lighten  my mood, it was a very happy and lovely milestone of getting one year closer to death (as Foamy says):) Things like that are always better when celebrated with friends and pizza!

18.07.2012 – warming up for Keane at The Circus, Helsinki

Warming up for Keane! Took no photos and there were no photos taken of us, but it was a cool gig and we saw Keane from the best seats in the building.

Also, I got a rad swimming suit for those rare moments when there is summer in Estonia (June for example totally  scr*ewed us over)

Took one vid of the thing, you can find it at facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iirismusic

(If you’re not in facebook, then where are you? Don’t be afraid, come here, step into the dark side.)

20.07.2012 – KÄMP at Lihula

We had a gig at Lihula, which is a small town in Estonia. There was a band-camp KÄMP for young music-loving peeps there. We did not expect such a great crowd of young folks, who were totally prepared to get out of it and get down with us! Estonian youth is phuckin’ alive!

Kostja with hair   Mikk pounding away!




The sensual world of Pisi

 Ago with his  everyday gear: his cat-shirt and an ukulele

Some links, yo. Aitäh! Tõesti ma ei osanud oodata nii ägedat noort publikut!<3

http://public.fotki.com/ReKetter/kmp-2012/kontsert/page8.html

http://public.fotki.com/BriteV/iirise-esinemine/#media

27.07.2012 – Qstock festival at Oulu

    You can’t see it, but she’s holding a gun and she’s ready to arrest you.

 Mikk iz playing drums…all the time!!

 Reading Haruki Murakami’s “1Q84″, it’s a part of why I haven’t made posts lately. It’s a story that sucks you in, I recommend it heavily, Murakami is becoming one of my favorite authors.
 Pisifoot!


 F*ing tourists posing near whatever parks they can get their cameras to.

On the road

 Pisi expressing joy all over Oulu

 F*ing tourists taking pictures in whatever sparkling pants they can get their hands on.

Headgear 1
 Headgear2

The idyllic caravan in the sunset….that eats you.

 The tent where the magic happened

Psychedelia

Fu*ing tourists posing with whatever bananas they can get their hands on.

Oh boys and their boyish….things

 Meet The Wonderguys! They’re wonderful!

 Anime-sign, it’s a rapper-thing.

 wut?

 Somebody watched the Foo Fighters Live dvd when the motor wasn’t running, so the car needed a local zap! to get it moving again. When it was running we watched some Radiohead Television (it was a one helluva trip: yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon, today everything seemed normal, but I doubt it will stay that way.)

 And back to that. Driving all through the night, again.

Basically this picture is the best example of how we felt when riding back home on the ferry after an all-night road trip from  Oulu. Especially Kaspar looked like this:

Thanks again everyone who has come to the gigs, it was a great July! Lots of love to you all!

I’m sorry if you’ve wanted to meet me after gigs or something and I haven’t been around. I just didn’t know where to come (and I’ve kinda hesitated to come infront of the stage, what if nobody’s there and I’ll have no excuse to be there, I don’t wanna seem like I’m looking for attention(Oh god, no! Nobody wants to expose their inner-attention-whore)).

I still have a memory of someone waving to me after the concert in Oulu, but it was dark and I wasn’t sure if he was waving to me or the guy near me, so I didn’t wave back and later regretted it. I’ll definitely try to lurk around more after the gigs in the future, but if you really wanna meet and stuff, then usually asking the guards or someone near the backstage for me will get me there.

I had a gig at Leigo too, but I will cover it in the next blogpost, this one has gotten way too long.

Next stops:

Greenfest, Tallinn, Estonia 10.08.2012 http://greenfest.rockcafe.ee/

Jurassic Rock, Visulahti, Mikkeli, Finland 11.08.2012 http://www.jurassicrock.fi/site/

Iiris@Tavastia, Helsinki, Finland 14.09.2012 https://www.facebook.com/events/123865997758221/permalink/124010031077151/

You have no clue just how long this blogpost has taken me, you would not believe it. I’m really bad at choosing things, I need a lot of time to choose stuff. Also, I’m scared of expressing myself in words, but there is one word that I love and it’s awesome.

More and more pictures from Pisi’s blog(where you can also see what she does with her free time): mikrofoon.blogspot.com

Sparkling summer cats!

I.

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My new face!  Soon you can wear it too!

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