Asteroid stage is one of the newest ones in Kosmos Festival. During the daytime you’ll find a variety of live bands, and when the night falls it becomes an altar for gods of suomisaundi. Maisa Lukkari, what’s your role on Asteroid stage?

⁃ I’m working as head sound engineer and sound team leader including band mixing. I’m also a technical producer as well as assisting with artist bookings, taking part in the visual/light team and being a right hand for main producer Samuel Virkkala. My job is to take care of every performer’s wishes – I want to create every artist a good experience performing in Kosmos Festival no matter the circumstances (everything happens in a forest)! I organize work shifts for our crew and make sure everything runs smoothly and as planned. Usually I’m also the one who uses witchcraft, Rubik’s cube solving skills and other sorcery on stuff that others might not have time for.

Asteroid stage, like couple of other stages on Kosmos Festival, is shared between
different collaborators. How does this work?

⁃ Sometimes it works very slowly and we were have lot of learning of communication on our own crew and between other stages also! This year we are going to keep our eye on the quality of the production and making everyone in the team happy to work together.

⁃ I think this year we have very professional and efficient team. Many times I’ve forgotten that I’m at work and feel more like being at a camping trip with my friends, so I can say that our team is like a family and it will be – otherwise nothing will work. We basically don’t hire new team members via open calls, because someone always knows someone who would be good on our team. We trust in open communication and help each other out, even when our own working time has passed.

We’d love to hear some highlights of Asteroid on Kosmos 2024 – which gigs are you
personally waiting to hear the most? What’s new, what’s exciting?

⁃ This year we have several very different and rare artists! Live bands I’m excited to see are From Grotto and Maan Tomu. What comes to suomisaundi I’m waiting for my all time favourites Oikeusjyvä and my team members at Trancebum family (Pavel Svimba and Dj Mielikki from Brazil). I’m also waiting for our northern artist @vauhti’s new unreleased songs and Tom Wanks’ set. I know this line-up will be a blast – can’t wait to see you all at the dancefloor!