About

The Fair Attempts is the “Black Mirror of Industrial Rock,” exploring themes of the future society we’re unwittingly constructing around ourselves. Each song reveals more of the dystopian world first imagined by the artist, Friendly Timo. The music has a hard and gritty sound while making you want to dance. Genres brought together to create this unique sound include Electro-industrial, Darkwave, and Synthpop.

Hailing from Finland, The Fair Attempts was founded in 2018 by Friendly Timo, the one man behind the compositions, lyrics, and audio engineering. During 2018, he released several experimental singles. The collection is called Indoctrination, and although it doesn’t represent true core and soul of the music of The Fair Attempts, it helped him to discover and express his unique sound. (Update: These songs were removed from distribution and streaming services, but are likely to be re-released as new versions that do represent The Fair Attempts at some point in the future.)

In early 2019, the debut EP arisTotal was released. The six track EP was well received at home in Finland and abroad. The album received positive reviews and the songs were featured in multiple radio shows, podcasts, and music blogs.

Not long after the release arisTotal, Timo’s wife, Starwing, became an official team member of The Fair Attempts, after working behind the scenes with him since the inception of the project.

During the summer of 2019, The Fair Attempts released two singles and music videos for both of them. The first full length LP, Carnal Insect, was released in the autumn. The Fair Attempts were so grateful for all the support they received from fans following the album’s release that they decided to release a Carnal Insect Remixes EP and give it to those supporters for free.

In 2019, Timo began sharing his vision of a dark future for humanity through his music and the character known as “TFA Guy.” Timo spoke about the character, “It is like this gas masked character is my avatar for expressing some deeper aspects of me and tell a story through it.” He explained, “it personifies the kind of individual that part of me feels inside: behind shields and barriers from the outside world and influences, while cautious and protective about everything that may hurt me.”

TFA Guy was first conceived during the creation of the song, Catwalk from the arisTotal EP, and every song The Fair Attempts produces reveals more of the character and the dystopian future world he lives in.

Speaking of that world envisioned by Friendly Timo, arisTotal is the prologue that introduces you to the world, while Carnal Insect is the prequel that reveals the downfall of society and how that world was born. Before the Carnal Insect LP was even released, Timo began composing new songs for the second full length album, called Dream Engine, which continues the story from where arisTotal set the stage. Timo and Starwing discussed themes for the new album, as well as the stories the songs would tell. Many of Timo’s ideas were so similar to a story idea Starwing had that she was inspired to write a novel based on the world of The Fair Attempts, which would be the companion novel for Dream Engine and would enable people to become more immersed in the dystopian future our world is speeding toward.

While the novel was being written and the album was created, they kept the connection between the two projects as a secret in plain sight, considering that Starwing’s novel is titled, Dreaming Your Dream. Of course several followers of The Fair Attempts recognized the relation and they finally confirmed it three weeks before the novel was available. Dreaming Your Dream is dystopian science fiction and also includes 50 Film Noir inspired illustrations painted by Melinda Maria Lack, that will also be featured in lyrics videos for every song on the Dream Engine LP.

Throughout 2020, Timo portrayed the protagonist of the novel through a form of cosplay in photo shoots for The Fair Attempts, rather than his TFA Guy character, to add to the art they were creating.

The Fair Attempts Interviews

June, 2020 (1 hour radio interview audio archived)
May, 2020
September, 2019

During 2019, The Fair Attempts also collaborated with several artists, including P’like and Jessi Frey. He worked with Plike on two songs: one called “Black Widow“ for the Carnal Insect album, and another called “Syzygy“ by P’like, on the album De Anima. He also produced the remix of Jessi Frey’s single, “Dark Heart.”

In 2020, The Fair Attempts collaborated with Jessi Frey again, to create two industrial versions of her hit songs, “Villainess” and “Addict Nation.” Jessi added new, powerful vocals that suited the industrial rock sound perfectly. Following that, Jessi sang the chorus in a very special song on the Dream Engine LP, called “Love and War.”