The hard to pronounce Kemialliset Ystavat play a mysterious, fucked up brand of psychedelic improv folk music -- fractured, fairytale sounds from the woods of Finland. Well, more likely a bedroom studio in Finland. But Kemialliset Ystavat seem like they
It's primarily the work of one main band member, Jan Anderzen. He's helped by, among others, our friend Sami Sanpakkila (of Es, Kiila, Velvolino and Fonal Records). Maybe the closest comparison we could make would be to NYC's Tower Recordings. But Kemialliset Ystavat's damaged psych meanderings somehow capture an even more "authentic, exotic" mood of post-krautrock wonderment than that conjured by the New Yorkers, although we love them so.
After getting all those great sixties International Harvester, Trad Gras Och Stenar etc. reissues in, it's nice to know that their spirit of psychedelic exploration is still alive and well in Scandinavia, thirty years on!
You know how we're always listing cds from the mystical, mythical Finnish free-folk crew of bands like Kemialliset Ystavat, Avarus, Uton and others that consist of material long before previously released on super limited edition formats like cd-r, lathe-cut vinyl, and cassette tape? Stuff that, upon inital release, only made it out to the handful of gnomes and trolls who hang out in the Finnish forests and snap up such treasures while they're still warm. If you're a fan but don't dwell in the deeps of the Finnish woods, it's a little frustrating ain't it? Well now here's your chance to get in on the ground floor with one of these releases. No promises that it will ever be available on any other format, either. From the same folks that brought us the fabulous Maan Matoset comp reviewed elsewhere this list... Live Kemialliset Ystavat! ON CASSETTE TAPE. Yup, just like in ye olden days. Packaged with nice, colorful j-card artwork. Recorded live in Hyvinkaa, 2005. Next best thing to being there... Taju is a muttering, howling, clanking, freaked out party of a record, just as mysterious and fun as any other Kemialliset document but very live and energetic indeed. Kazoos compete with rattling percussion, electronic drones, and barnyard vocalizations... It's a preschool Amon Duul on a sugar high. Get it while you can, we won't have these for long (already some gnomes have been by to pick up their copies).
The last week or two of our so-called "summer" here in San Francisco, has been pretty darn gray. Cold, overcast, gray, a bummer. But, getting the long-awaited new album from Finland's Kemialliset Ystavat (aka Jan Anderzen and friends) has made a big difference! You know how we love love love all things Finland, and Fonal. That magic hasn't abated. Lively, lovely, colorful; woozy and wonderful, this Kemialliset is just what the doctor ordered. Have you heard 'em before? Kemialliset, and their fellow Fonal artists, have been referred to by us (and others) as "Finnish Forest Folk". Fairly accurate... as long as you're ok with folk music made using computers. From a forest that's full of brightly colored trees and plants whose pharmacological uses are probably entirely recreational and specifically hallucinatory. Populated by strange creatures like gibbering gnomes and tittering trolls. And of course, they ARE from Finland. Of course of course.
Carefully constructed by Jan in his forest laboratory, a collage of contributions from folks like Roope Eronen (Avarus, Maniacs Dream, Pylon), Kevin Regan (Fricara Pacchu, Anaksimandros, Avarus), Jussi Lehtisalo (Circle, Pharaoh Overlord), C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core), Neil Campbell (Astral Social Club), Markus Maki (Anaksimandros, Avarus, Kiila), Pekko Kappi (Kiila), Hitoshi Kojo (Juppala Kaapio), Joshua Stevenson (Jackie-O Motherfucker) and others, this is, as you might expect, a delirious and dense tapestry of seamlessly flowing, ever-changing, psychedelic soundz. 14 tracks total to delight the ear with such teeter-tottering elements as lilting layered female vox, bleepy glitchy background electronix (track six sounds like they've wandered into an '80s video arcade to record), wheezing harmonium drones, rattling ritual percussion, cartoon SFX, snippets of synth melody seemingly snatched from a '70s Bo Hansson record, and much much more, from krauty rhythmics to lullaby babble, and hybrids thereof. It's part Incredible String Band, part Raymond Scott or Bruce Haack. Or imagine a completely dosed and demented Black Moth Super Rainbow making a cd-r for Jewelled Antler, maybe.
Truly a phantasmagorical tour-de-force, utterly what we needed to brighten these grey days and/or make 'em cosier. The compact disc version is packaged in a tri-fold digi with a thick booklet packed with beautiful full-color photographs and some very interesting text in both Finnish and English, and the vinyl is nice too.
Finland's Kemialliset Ystavat (and Avarus, and Anaksimandros, and Uton, and Lau Nau, and Doktor Kettu, etc.) are often referred to as "forest-folk", implying some sort of quiet, gentle rustling mystery amidst the trees, and sometimes that's quite the case. But the first few tracks here, on Kemialliset's latest, would certainly scare off any friendly small animals -and- wake up the sleeping forest trolls. It's woozy woodsy cacophony unleashed. This be outsider "folk" at its most abstract and noisy and "free". But, by track four or five things have calmed down a bit, the sounds have gotten more organized. Some charismatic, long-haired, bearded guru has obviously taken charge of the previously wild music-makers, their pagan energy now channelled down paths previously trod unshod by the likes of Parson Sound and Amon Duul... more mellow and musical, still druggy and damaged. Track six, "Superhimmeli", comes off like something by cult '60s ESP tribe Cromagnon!! (Perhaps due to having the same keening horn cry as heard in Cromagnon's "Caledonia".) There's a hippy chant drone density to a lot of this that's VERY satisfying. It's like an ancient celebration underway, wooden space rock rituals, accompanied by electronic squiggles or birds atwitter, burbling and gurgling sounds in the margins... sunshiney yet strange, very strange. Fonal thinks this is one of their best yet and we wouldn't argue.
NB. There IS vinyl of this, but unfortunately the copies we got were damaged -- we're expecting replacements from Finland soon, though.
Awesome vinyl reissue of these two long out of print 3" cd-r's from one of our favorite Finnish outfits Kemialliset Ystavat, one originally released on UK noise-experimental label Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers, the other released by Finnish underground folk label Lal Lal Lal and originally packaged in a velvet sleeve designed to be used as a petting glove! Everything we love about KY is present here, gorgeously primitive / innocent / timeless Ur-folk, simple strummed guitars, outdoorsy lo fi recording, chant-like vocals, simple clattery percussion, dreamy hazy ritualistic soundscapes, delicate melancholy melodies, deliberate rhythmic stumble, subtle tape malfunction and home recorded production fuckery, loping late afternoon, staring at the sun rhythms, and occasional swirling swooping electronics. Fans of Kemialliset and all things Finnish (you know who you are) definitely need to pick this up. And all you folks who have been digging the Jewelled Antler stuff (Blithe Suns, Thuja, Ivytree, Child Readers, etc.) will find a whole new world of sonic forests and audio landscapes to explore and get lost in.
Latest in this long running series of split 12"s, each volume's number in the series denoted by the number of holes punched in the plain white cover, this volume thus being number 19! And this time number 19 is the magic number as both bands sharing the split are LONG time aQ faves, Kemialliset Ystavat from Finland, and Sunroof!, the more droned out and blissy project of Skullflower's Matthew Bower. Both groups sound amazing as usual, but display different sounds than we're used to here.
Let's start with Kemialliset, whose usual sound is a gloriously ramshackle abstract foresty folk, and it still is, sort of, but it sounds like someone in the group got a computer (or at least finally figure out how to use one), as this is easily the most polished sounding KY record yet, and the most rife with strange electronics and effects, but by no means does that mean it's less out there, in fact it's probably the weirdest and most twisted KY record yet.
Woozy twisted lullabies, warped music box melodies, haunting vocal harmonies, it's still foresty and folky, but way more fractured, with strange edits and tons of swirling effects and electronics, way more experimental and abstract, pretty and lilting for sure, but totally twisted. The final track is fantastic, a playful groove, only mildly effected, hypnotic and beautiful, but still a bit off kilter.
The flipside finds Sunroof!, one of our favorite purveyors of glistening high end ur-drone, and technically these tracks still qualify but they're a bit more abrasive and harsh, the opener is brittle and caustic, a field of shrieking feedback, and hiss drenched high end, sputtering horns(?) and all manner of NOISE. The second track is all warped radio transmissions, still droney and minimal, buried beneath a sea of pulsating buzz. And the final track explodes with sheets of corrosive buzz, all high end, grinding and fuzz drenched, a mighty ur-drone bordering on Merzbow territory, but always with a haunting melodic undercurrent that transforms what could be near white noise into something thick and layered and organic and in some strange abrasive way, quite beautiful.
As much as we think sometimes we have a real way with words, there's always somebody who totally puts us to shame, which is exactly why we're gonna start our review of this, the sixth and latest record from Finnish underground outsider rock weirdo one man band Keuhkot ('lungs' in Finnish), with a description written by Jussi of Circle, whose label Ektro released it:
"The sixth struggle album of Kake Puhuu. The combat noise and insect world music downpreaching book. Rawer than its precursors, this album strips it down to marrow and squeezes juice out of it. Keuhkot batters mindless attributes of humanity from insects' point of view by means of reverse pop music. The aim is towards backwoods motorism, meritocamping, real men, moose hunt madness and established global upstarts. The most bearded feminist of Finland, Keuhkot, kicks the real man's groin. Keuhkot makes its own ethnic fusion gadding from rhythmic highways to distorted sidepaths in a refreshed guitar oriented soundscape. You may call it freaky but according to Kake, pop music (including metal, of course) is a freaky industrialized illness that needs a vaccination � which is Keuhkot."
We definitely couldn't have said it better ourselves, but heck, why not give it a try? Longtime readers of the aQ list might remember Andee's harrowing and ultra personal private Keuhkot performance in an abandoned schoolhouse in the wilds of rural Finland (you can read more about it elsewhere on the aQ site, in one of the other Keuhkot reviews), and are quite possibly already fans of Kake Puhuu's twisted sonic world of primitive programmed drums, twisted percussion, weird samples, layered loops, warped and woozy synths, detuned guitars and warbled guttural vox, and how could you not be, Puhuu is like the underground electro minimal abstract noise rock Jandek of Finland, record after record of totally idiosyncratic, ultra personal, musical weirdness, that sonically is all over the map, be it twang flecked almost Western sounding folk, woozy crooned torch songs, junkyard percussion driven lo-fi dirge rock, stumbling hypno-prog, who knows how the heck to classify any of this, easiest to just say this is some sort of utterly singular, surreal Finnish psychedelia, equal parts the Residents, Tom Waits, Birthday Party, Cop Shoot Cop, and who knows what else, all filtered through that totally cracked Finnish sensibility that informs so much of the Finnish music we love. A little bit circusy, a LOT whatthefuck, droney, fuzzy, distorted, stumbly, we want to say this is the best Keuhkot yet, but we sort of love them all, cuz they're all great. We'd say it's the weirdest, but they're all pretty goddamn weird too. We will say the opening track "Kuuluisia Alkemisteja Vol 1", is one of the coolest jams we've heard in ages, all super blown out synth buzz, pulsing and undulating, laced with haunting disembodied vocals, but the sort of droned out abstract psych trip out we could listen to forever. Just check out the samples, and prepare yourself to be baffled and confused and totally transported to some seriously demented sonic otherworld, and Jussi did in fact say it best: Keuhkot kicks the real man's groin!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Yet another strange release on the increasingly difficult to pin down Handmade Birds label, run by R. Loren of Pyramids, White Moth and Sailors with Wax Wings. In a matter of months, Handmade Birds has more releases than most labels have over the course of years! But hell, we're not complaining. So far we've had Blut Aus Nord's Mort, Celestiial's Desolate North, Evan Caminiti's When California Falls Into The Sea, His Name Is Alive's King Of Sweet (reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), and about a million more on the way (Der Blutharsch, Human Quena Orchestra, The Rita, Crooked Necks, Swamp Horse, Servile Sect and more!!), but this one, this is odd even by Handmade Birds admittedly far out criteria. This is a triple 10" boxset reissue of three long out of print demo tapes from Finnish black folk weirdos Key, a duo consisting of Kaarna from drone outfit Somnivore and Rauta from outsider black metal horde Circle Of Ouroborus, and all the mentions of 'black' above could be a little misleading, as this is far from black, and not at all metal. It's more in keeping with the later Circle Of Ouroborus recordings, a sort of fractured folk, a jangly, gloomy folk pop, all clean guitars, and haunting atmospheres, the vocals plaintive and hushed one second, deep and dramatically crooned the next, the sound slipping easily from psychedelic folk, to haunting almost new wave, to creepy doomy ballads, to reverby proto punk, but all gloomy and moody and fantastically strange, sounding a lot at moments like some lost nineties New Zealand outfit, maybe a bit like the Moles, or some obscure band on Flying Nun or Xpressway, the melodies are lilting, the basslines gloomy and a little gothic, the songs minimal, but strangely catchy, and definitely haunting and otherworldly, fans of Finnish stuff like CoO and Dead Reptile Shrine will definitely dig, as will anyone into fractured freak folk, and outsider gloom pop.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, housed in a silver foil printed box, each of the three 10"s pressed on colored vinyl (white with black splatter, milky clear, ultra clear), each record in its own printed sleeve.
Finland's Kiila play, for want of a better description, experimental indie-rock. They share with other Finnish bands like Circle a predeliction for the effective use of repetition, utilizing loops like band member Sami "Es" Sanpakkila's solo A Love Cycle record. Kiila specialize in going off on adventurous, but mostly low-key explorations, from moments of happy pop to dark strum to noisier beats and drones. They take many approaches to music making, but as the extensive liner notes/essay state, their art is rooted in their listening, both to others music and to their own material, which is thoroughly crafted but never "complete". I'm not so much a fan of Kiila's occasional English-language vocals (Finnish is so much better, guys!) but those vocals are indie-rock standard and anyway much of this is instrumental. A very nice discovery -- and even if this record wasn't as good as it is, it would be worth it for the fucked-up but gorgeous, stumbling final track "Heartflowers".
Some of you will remember Kiila from their 2001 album Heartcore, a lovely disc of low-key indie rock and Circle-like loopage from a couple friends of ours in Finland. In the intervening years, Kiila has morphed a bit. Their new disc Silmat Sulkaset is quite as nice as Heartcore, even better we think as the band has both expanded into a seven-piece ensemble and simultaneous seemingly retreated into the Finnish forest where they now play achingly beautiful psychedelic folk rock, not unlike the more traditionally-influenced efforts of '70s Swedes like Arbete Och Fritid and Trad Gras Och Stenar, venturing into the improv territory of fellow Finnish forest-dwellers Kemialliset Ystavat as well. Male and female voices sing sweetly (in Finnish only -- taking our advice?) over sundry acoustic guitars, electric drones, wavering flutes, and hand percussion. Magical, melodic, mysterious. Krautrock ghosts smile on them. The USA might offer comparisons like Black Forest/Black Sea, Skygreen Leopards, Golden Hotel and Espers, but the Finnish folk element here is irreplaceable... Really really nice. Nice Fonal packaging too!
Of all the Finnish bands we love, and all the bands on Finnish label Fonal, Kiila might just be the most traditionally indie rock. But then that's really relative, since we're talking about Finland, and the fact that Kiila is made up of members of other, much more far out bands like Es, Kemialliset Ystavat, Avarus, Anaksimadros. So you can figure that even though Kiila traffic in indie rock, it's unlike most indie rock you know.
Right off the bat the first track reminds us of a much more blissed out folkier Animal Collective, chiming guitars, delicate fingerpicking, softly tangled harmonies, reverbed abstract vocals, sunshine-y and dreamy, really quite lovely. The rest of the record is not so blissed out though, the second track is a fiddle laced bit of indie rocking, jangly guitars, propulsive drumming, lots of swirling drone-y organs, and much more traditional sounding vocals, in fact it almost reminds us a little of Wilco, albeit filtered through the cracked Finnish pop sensibility. The rest of the record continues in a simialr direction, channeling much of what we love about indie rock, but infusing it with plenty of twang, Finnish forest folkiness, and plenty of off kilter weirdness, whether it's thick sheets of undulating buzz, fluries of birdsong, streaks of tripped out effects or thick swells of rumbling low end crunch, those various elements are deftly woven into more traditional pop smithery.
A few tracks revisit the dreamy folkiness of the record opener, stripped down to just acoustic guitar, fiddle and voice, while others are almost entirely vocal harmony drive, and at least one is a gorgeous droned out synthscape, and another is a ramshackle horn flecked, chaotically percussive tripped out free jam.
The sounds are lush and beautiful, jangly and poppy, and just a little bit twisted and fractured, they may be the most 'traditional' sounding of all our Finnish faves, but that still means this is weirder and more awesomely abstract thatn 90 percent of music out there.
Gorgeous Fonal packaging as always, the cd in a full color 6 panel cardboard gatefold jacket, with a printed inner sleeve which includes liner notes and lyrics and cool printed Japanese style obi, the vinyl in a normal but quite colorful sleeve.
This super limited (and hand numbered) cassette from legendary Finnish composer, inventor, instrument designer and musician Erkki Kurenniemi, celebrates the 50 year anniversary of his first, and perhaps most famous record work, 1963's "On-Off". This track has been included in various Kurreniemi compilations, and was inspired by the roar of turbines Kurreniemi heard as a child once while visiting a power plant. It's a sprawling abstract expanse of howling buzzing electro acoustic musique concrete, lots of thrums and rumbles, disembodied voices buried in the background, slow shifting textures, and gristled drones, all spread out into shimmering, undulating sheets of sound. Super dynamic too, flitting from hushed murmur to explosive and caustic howl, and often settling somewhere right in between. It sounds occasionally like jet engine noise, and at others, rushing water, or whirling wind, multiple variations of dense hypnotic sound. Noisy enough to predict much of the industrial/noise music that would follow, but also prescient of so much electronic and experimental music as well. Grey and austere, but somehow also lush and lovely.
This tape includes the original version of "On-Off", along with a second, shorter German edit. The flipside features a 2013 reimagining of / homage to "On-Off", which attempts to capture the same spirit with a whole different set of sounds, lots of electronics, and strange FX, the sound less grey and more multihued, not as raw or primitive, and a bit more psychedelic, but quite a cool piece, regardless of its provenance.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!! Each one hand numbered and housed in a thick black and white J-card, the whole tape sealed in a plastic bag.
A while back we reviewed a killer compilation from this legendary Finnish composer / inventor / early electronic music pioneer. This new release on Jussi from Circle's Ektro Records offshoot Full Contact, features many of those same tracks on vinyl for the first time, along with a bunch of others that weren't on the cd version. Here's what we had to say about that collection:
This is an awesome document of early computer music from Finnish inventor/composer Erkki Kurenniemi, who is featured on the Arktinen Hysteria: Suomi-Avantgarden Esipuutarhureita compilation, a past aQ Record of the Week, that collection a brief sonic overview of Finnish experimental/electronic/avant garde in the sixties. Kurenniemi's track on the comp is a sort of precursor to Pan Sonic, stiff robotic dance music made from blips and bleeps. This collection of his work from 1963-1973 shows multiple sides of Kurenniemi, the silly, playful side, like the comp track (which also appears here) and then a much darker, noisier side. Having spent time as an artist, a photographer, and a musician, Kurennemi was always an enthusiastic amateur, with most of his works remaining in a raw and unfinished state. Which in no way detracts from the power of these amazing pieces. In fact like lots of home-recorded/primitively recorded music, the quality of the recording is a huge part of the overall sound. A combination of computers, synthesizers and home made automated sound making devices, resulted in a broad range of sound, from grainy rough walls of sound to boinky primitive rhythm tracks to thick rumbling tones and ear piercing sine waves to dorky spastic freak outs to twinkly spacescapes. Really cool stuff.
Really cool indeed. This comp definitely expands on the earlier cd version, in part by introducing the music in the context of Kurenniemi's 'rules', the first of which was "A work has to be completed in a single day." The second was: "Consecutive sounds must be chosen so that they are totally inconsistent or surprising and have no rational relationship with each other." And most interesting, the third rule stated simply: "...?" Not sure exactly what that means, but perhaps we're not meant to know, or perhaps it means nothing. What we do know is the music of Kurenniemi is fascinating and beautiful, difficult and perplexing, sometimes it's like mad video game music gone haywire, at other times it's darkly delicate and downright haunting, much of this created on machines he built and invented, electro-acoustic experiments give way to tape collages which in turn give way to primitive early synthesizer compositions which in turn give way to pure electronic sounds. Gorgeous mysterious stuff, and absolutely recommended for fans of early electronic and computer music pioneers like Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Spiegel, F.C. Judd, Daphne Oram, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, as well as imaginary pioneers like Ursula Bogner!!
Incredible deluxe packaging, super thick full color heavy duty gatefold jacket with extensive liner notes, pictures and detailed notes on each song.
Kuupuu is a bit like a Finnish Grouper, her songs are murky and mysterious, the sounds feel disembodied and otherworldly, her vocals are ghostlike and gauzy, but those Grouper-like sounds are filtered through her Finnish folk filter, having spent time in Avarus, Anaksimandros and a handful of other big time aQ faves. Nearly half the record is made up of hushed intimate lo-fi ballads, muted and muddy and almost underwater sounding, her voice and musical accompaniment bleeding into each other until it's sometimes almost impossible to tell which is which, but those stretches of bleary eyed balladic drift and muffled shimmery dreamdrone are peppered with chucks of weird soft noise, abstract rhythmic workouts and some strange very Finnish sounding bursts of what-the-fuck chaos: plenty of clattery tribal percussion, detuned guitars, demented music box melodies, field recordings and found sounds, tape manipulation, gongs and bells and birdcalls, looped acoustic guitars, super lo-fi tape recorded voices, swooping backwards melodies, and the occasional jagged shard of feedback or streak of fractured crunch, but somehow Kuupuu manages to tie it all together into something much more cohesive and lovely than you might imagine.
Definitely for fans of all things Finnish and foresty and folky and freaky: Avarus, Islaja, Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystavat, Kiila, Shogun Kunitoki, Es, etc. And adventurous fans of Grouper might give this a try, if they're not averse to some weirdo noisemaking with their moody melancholia.
So our beloved Finnish singer, Lau Nau (also of Kiila, Paivansade, the Anaksimandros, Avarus, Maailma, and the trio Hertta Lussu Assa - basically most of Finland's underground foresty free folk scene), has moved far away from the drone prevalent on her previous releases, and drifted off into a more spare psych-folk scape. These songs really breathe. Lau's cool and airy vocals fall gently on the mostly piano, jouhikko (a traditional Finnish lyre), and drum arrangements like snow - all the while singing about darkness and death like she's Emily Dickinson. Of particular note is "Run, My Horsey, Run", which has a Gypsy folk influence. Lau's known for her eccentric and vast instrumentation, and this release is no disappointment in that regard. "Conqueror's Song" includes Lau's own beat-boxing (yeah, you read that right), and "Paperthin" credits someone on "seagulls". We're not sure how you play a seagull, but we enjoyed their appearance on this wistful, gloomy, and very pretty release!
Solo record number two from aQ pal Jussi Lehtisalo, frontman of Finnish hypnorockers Circle, Ektro / Full Contact label head honcho, and member of too many outfits to count, a few of which would include Ektroverde, Ratto Ja Lehtisalo, Doktor Kettu, Pharaoh Overlord, Rakhim, Grumbling Fur, Krypt Axeripper, Motorspandex, Split Cranium, Steel Mammoth...
Sadly, we haven't yet managed to get Jussi's first solo lp, by all accounts a surprisingly beautiful and subdued album, but we did manage to get a bunch of these, the tape version at least (there's a vinyl version as well, which we hope to have soon too), which is also beautiful, but about as far from subdued as you can get. Both side long tracks are dense and layered, and constantly shifting. In some ways taking all the disparate sounds of Jussi's other bands, and somehow mashing them all together, into something surprisingly cohesive.
The A side, "Caterpillars", starts off sounding like some sort of abstract deserty ambient experimental doom, with churning guitars, spurts of metallic crunch, clattery bicycle spoke like percussion, woozy Morricone-esque twang and spidery minor key melodies, peppered with occasional twisted little synth trills, all beneath some monstrous growled vokills, before the song transforms into something more woozy and jazzy, a little late night bluesy, with crooned distorted vox, and thick low end rib cage rattling thrum, only to then launch into some seriously twisted buzz drenched rock pound, which initially sounds like it might explode into full on black metal, but instead, the pounding and buzzing is joined by more twisted xylophone like synth melodies, booming sub bass throbs and cool blasts of rad classic metal style harmonized leads, before once again slipping back into a spacey sort of moody, woozy slowcore, driven by frenetic high hat cymbal stutter, and trippy dubbed out snare drums, still more crooned vox, the sound dreamy and washed out, laced with strange swoonsome faux horns and glistening spaced out FX before finally returning to that strange xylophone driven metallic stomp.
The flipside is equally schizophrenic, "Here March The Cranes" begins all grinding gnarled guitars in a cloud of cymbal sizzle, which is then joined by some Circle like hypnorock bass, the guitars coalescing into little soaring squalls of majestic fast picking, multiple guitars interwoven, those guitars growing more intense, unfurling wild psychedelic leads, everything getting noisier and noisier, until finally switching gears and mellowing out, into a twisted post rock sprawl, all ethereal guitar shimmer, wild jazzy drummy, and spaced out bass blurts. Soon those growled vox come back in, and the sound turns into some strange sinister epic prog rock, swirling synthy strings, a slow build, more and more intense and tense, before splintering into a stretch of cool droned out noise rock churn, that sound gradually growing more and more spacey and serene, dreamy melodies, more of those faux horns, all manner of strange percussion and swirling FX, as the noise recedes, the sound becomes a hazy, lilting bit of psychedelic dreamdrone raga like drift. Fantastic! Easily one of the coolest weirdest things we've heard from Jussi, which is saying a lot considering his whole career has basically been nothing BUT a series of cool weird releases!! WAY recommended. And limited, limited TO JUST 100 COPIES!!! The cassette comes sealed in a stickered little bag, inside a cool cd sized box, artwork affixed to the inside and outside, and sealed shut with another sticker.
Last year we raved about a cassette (and then vinyl lp) called Interludes For Prepared Beast, the second solo release from Jussi Lehtisalo, the bassist/mastermind behind our favorite Finns, those mighty hypnorockers Circle (and many more 'NWOFHM' bands besides). Those of you who prefer compact discs over vinyl, let alone tapes, might have felt a twinge of turntable envy then, since you were missing out on an amazing album (our review concluded with: "Easily one of the coolest weirdest things we've heard from Jussi", and that's saying a lot). Thankfully, Jussi, who loves cds as much as we do, has just released Interludes For Prepared Beast on cd via his Ektro imprint - and even better, the disc also includes Jussi's first solo album, from 2010, entitled Rotta, which is also (of course) quite fantastic, and was a limited vinyl release we never even got any copies of the first time around. So even more to be thankful for, and another reason to pick this up.
We'll try to be brief about Rotta, 'cause we already wrote a lot about Interludes, as you will see. Simply put, it's gorgeous. Unlike maybe what you might expect from the man responsible for so much bombastic, heavy, progged out rock, Rotta definitely represents Jussi's softer side. Intimate and twilit, Rotta is a spacious sonic tapestry of gentle drones, cyclic guitar motifs, softly pulsating bass, and ambient field recordings interwoven with hushed, echo effected vocalizations (the words all in Finnish, we assume, so we don't know what he's on about, but it sounds deep regardless) and lovely layers of shortwave static n' hiss. The opening track "Veljeni" features some occasional harmonica twang, bringing to mind the cinematic, open spaces atmosphere of the likes of Earth circa Hex. Elsewhere, on "Aikoja Sitten", the vibe gets darker, the track lashed with stormy, sinister synthesizer sounds, before dreamily concluding with monkish vocal intonations over a bed of wavering bell-like tones and other mysterious, entrancing sound-swoosh. Fans of Circle's 'soundtrackier' side, mellowed-out albums like Miljard and Tower, will be in heaven. The "circular" sound of Circle is most certainly very present within these compositions; minimalist, mesmeric repetition being Jussi's forte of course.
So that's the first four tracks here, the Rotta portion of this disc, all indeed surprisingly beautiful and subdued, music to totally lose yourself in. Then there's the last two, over a quarter-hour each, representing side A and B of Interludes For Prepared Beast. They also beautiful in their way, but about as far from subdued as you can get. Much heavier, more "gritty" and intense. Both tracks are dense and layered, and constantly shifting. In some ways taking all the disparate sounds of Jussi's other bands (among them Circle, Ektroverde, Ratto Ja Lehtisalo, Doktor Kettu, Pharaoh Overlord, Rakhim, Krypt Axeripper, Split Cranium, Steel Mammoth, and others), and somehow mashing them all together, into something surprisingly cohesive.
The A side (track 5 here), "Caterpillars", starts off sounding like some sort of abstract deserty ambient experimental doom, with churning guitars, spurts of metallic crunch, clattery bicycle spoke like percussion, woozy Morricone-esque twang and spidery minor key melodies, peppered with occasional twisted little synth trills, all beneath some monstrous growled vokills, before the song transforms into something more woozy and jazzy, a little late night bluesy, with crooned distorted vox, and thick low end rib cage rattling thrum, only to then launch into some seriously twisted buzz drenched rock pound, which initially sounds like it might explode into full on black metal, but instead, the pounding and buzzing is joined by more twisted xylophone like synth melodies, booming sub bass throbs and cool blasts of rad classic metal style harmonized leads, before once again slipping back into a spacey sort of moody, woozy slowcore, driven by frenetic high hat cymbal stutter, and trippy dubbed out snare drums, still more crooned vox, the sound dreamy and washed out, laced with strange swoonsome faux horns and glistening spaced out FX before finally returning to that strange xylophone driven metallic stomp.
The flipside (aka track 6) is equally schizophrenic. "Here March The Cranes" begins all grinding gnarled guitars in a cloud of cymbal sizzle, which is then joined by some Circle like hypnorock bass, the guitars coalescing into little soaring squalls of majestic fast picking, multiple guitars interwoven, those guitars growing more intense, unfurling wild psychedelic leads, everything getting noisier and noisier, until finally switching gears and mellowing out, into a twisted post rock sprawl, all ethereal guitar shimmer, wild jazzy drummy, and spaced out bass blurts. Soon those growled vox come back in, and the sound turns into some strange sinister epic prog rock, swirling synthy strings, a slow build, more and more intense and tense, before splintering into a stretch of cool droned out noise rock churn, that sound gradually growing more and more spacey and serene, dreamy melodies, more of those faux horns, all manner of strange percussion and swirling FX, as the noise recedes, the sound becomes a hazy, lilting bit of psychedelic dreamdrone raga like drift. Fantastic! Easily one of the coolest weirdest things we've heard from Jussi, which is saying a lot considering his whole career has basically been nothing BUT a series of cool weird releases!!
All told, 78 minutes and 48 seconds of amazing music that probably one no single person but Jussi could possibly have come up with. Hopefully this disc won't remain Jussi's 'complete solo works' for long, we'd love a volume two someday. WAY recommended.
Once again, it's time to dig deep into the murky musical underground of the great white north, Finland in particular, home to sooooooooooo many aQ faves over the years: Circle, Aavikko, Pharaoh Overlord, Doktor Kettu, Islaja, Avarus, Circle Of Ouroborus, Dead Reptile Shrine, Cleaning Women, Fleshpress, Magyar Posse, Hanoi Rocks (!), Kemialliset Ystavat, Keuhkot, Smack, Mr. Peter Hayden, Death Trip, Worms, Nightsatan, Reverend Bizarre, Ride For Revenge, Skepticism, Tiermes, Uton, Will Over Matter, we could go on and on and on. Oh and let's not forget recent Record Of The Weekers Billy Boys, who seem like the perfect segue into THIS week's Record Of The Week from another group of Finnish oddballs, The Leo Bugariloves, who are most likely virtually unknown to all but the most obsessive Finnophiles, or Bad Vugum completists, their sound pretty warped and WTF? even by weirdo Finnish standards. The label mentions Suicide, the Residents, and krautrock, which all definitely apply, but the LB's also have a weird sort of lo-fi exotica vibe going on, fusing looped Casio rhythms, to warbly synths, primitive programmed skitter wrapped around angular detuned twang, deep growly vocals delivered in a gruff barked croon, bits of Morricone-ish melody surface throughout, but there's plenty of swagger too, some songs slip into full on glam rock Gary Glitter style big beats, all under fuzzy synthy swirls, and chiming almost rockabilly guitar crunch, others get all Stoogesy, bluesy and buzzy, and still others get sort of Gobliny, some tracks laced with woozy horn bleats, others with swoonsome faux strings, but always, the LB's transform the sounds into their own twisted home brewed outsider avant electro pop concoction, and it's one that's weirdly addictive, and unlike the willfully difficult damaged sonics of the Billy Boys, the music of the LB's is playful, and melodic, and actually pretty fun, sure it's dark and brooding and fractured and fucked up at times, but even then it's often shot through with goofy melodies, or gradually transforms into some weirdly abstract bit of stumbling carnivalesque exotica. We can't help but mention another past record of the week, local outsider one man band Fastest, there's much of the same sort of idiosyncratic cinematic electro rhythmic weirdness going on, but the LB's are Finnish too, so this definitely has that weird ineffable Finnish special something that transforms what could have been pure home recorded weirdness, into something that's kind of warped genius, the LB's peppering their difficult listening with quite a knack for melody, plenty of popsmithery lurking in these buzzing, skittering, twangy, quirky, fractured and fragmented electro pop oddities, so much so, that repeated listens reveal these tracks to be more than just oddities, more like some alternate universe pop gems, that seem to have maybe been slightly damaged in their transmission between universes, and odds are, you'll find yourself impossibly hooked, with any of these tracks liable to get lodged in your head like crazy.
The Leo Bugariloves features members of legendary Finnish punk outfits Terveet Kadet and Death Trip (whose collected works reissued on Jussi from Circle's Ektro label we reviewed and raved about recently) but this is about as far as you can get from either of those bands, sounding more like some lo-fi mad scientist concoction of Devo, Fastest, They Might Be Giants, Dirty Beaches and Felix Kubin all run through some cracked Finnish music filter, and then molded into some sort of surreal David Lynchian Las Vegas lounge act. This two disc collection gathers up all sort of vinyl only rarities, long out of print gems, as well as a ton of unreleased stuff, including a handful of live and demo tracks, those tracks in particular displaying more of the group's mesmeric and murky lo-fi krautrock vibe...
Twisted, and bizarre, and most definitely baffling, but crazy catchy, yet another batch of fantastically fucked Finnish weirdness that we can't recommend highly enough!
Licensed from Bad Vugum in Finland.
If you're anything like us, all it will take is three simple words to convince you that you need this: FLUTE. FINLAND. NINETEEN SEVENTY ONE. Okay, so that last one's not really a single word, but yes, this fantastic chunk of Finnish Flute heavy jazz folk was indeed released in that musically mindblowing year, and is pretty much everything you could hope for from a seventies Finnish flautist, it's groovy, jazzy, folky, a little bit rocking and a lot bit pretty goddamn weird. Just take the opening track, after some field recordings of seagulls and lapping waves on the shore, Loiri whistles along to some simply strummed acoustic guitar, and suddenly you realize it's essentially a jazzed up cover of Blind Faith's "Can't Find My Way Home", hand drums and flutes swing in, some deep wordless "la la" vocalizing and then it's back to the waves and birds. Definitely an odd way to start a record, but these guys are Finnish after all.
The rest of the record is not so obviously strange (or is it?), the second track is some groovy flute driven folk, the flute playing is stellar, woozy stand up bass, intricate hand drumming and more steel string strum, there's some bluesy psychedelic guitar leads, and then there's a drum solo, accompanied by humming (or is that kazoo), and then it's right back into it, Loiri often singing and vocalizing through the flute (a la Roland Kirk), which makes it even more far out.
The record shifts gears constantly, the next track begins playful sing songy lullaby, suddenly transforming into some sort of gypsy folk music the next, what sounds like a drunken tavern sing along, and then it's right back to the lullaby like fluttery flute of the opening, and then a strange old field recording of a carnival or circus. All a single track. The next track is more straight ahead jazz, some incredible flute playing and amazing drumming, the next track too, sounding almost Latin Jazz, but then along comes "Mummon Kaappikello" a groovy bit of big band jazz, backing up some sped up chipmunk vocals, turning the otherwise trade jazz into something totally warped, and then it's right back into it, some seriously swinging seventies jazz funk, and still more kick ass flute.
The final three tracks are more folky jazzy grooviness, some serious strum heavy drum driven rhythmic jazz, gives way to some jazzy cabaret, with deep crooned dramatic vocals, and finally finishing off with a brief bit of folky flute and acoustic guitar that returns to the opening bit of Blind Faith. Wow. Awesome, and bizarre and amazing and easily one of the coolest things Porter has dug up. And again: FINLAND. FLUTE. 1971.
Eye popping pop art cover with a big foldout poster, both depicting Loiri in aviator's helmet and goggles, with a painted on bright yellow and red bullseye shirt and little angle's wings!
Lord Fist is a neat/dumb name that sounds pretty metal, eh? And yep, Lord Fist are metal all right, from Finland, via Jussi from Circle's Full Contact vinyl imprint. Now, Jussi's Ektro and Full Contact labels have brought us plenty of "NWOFHM" - New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal - bands before, yeah. But those quasi-joke (or are they?) bands were never quite the real deal like Lord Fist, who on this debut four song 12", actually sound authentically NWOBHM - New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, a la Angel Witch, Cloven Hoof, Satan, etc.!
And dang, they're good. The youthful foursome of Lord Fist dish out rippers like "Lord Of The Night" and "Velvet Gods", chock full of high pitched screams (for vengeance!), jaunty galloping riffage, wailing leads, catchy choruses, and epick & mystickal vibes.
Could easily be up there, someday soon, with the best of today's crop of throwback metal bands like Enforcer and Cauldron, though the 'cult' feel here surpasses those. Man, Finland is making our heads bang lately, with the Ranger 12" (also on Full Contact) and now this!
This is the debut release from these Finnish heavies, and is a crushing slab of gloriously abject doomsludge infused with plenty of old school slo-mo death metal crush, the label mentions bands like Coffins, Autopsy, Winter and Celtic Frost, and we're definitely feeling all of those, but we're also hearing plenty of Melvins (especially in the vocals) even some diSEMBOWELMENT, not to mention all those other modern death metal outfits like Disma, Vasaeleth, Vastum, Encoffination and the like. Lurk mix long stretches of droned out ambience, layered guitar buzz and effects drenched thrum, with bursts of churning chugging heaviness, pounding doomic sludge, the drums massive and pummeling, the vocals slipping from a growling guttural howl to a surprisingly melodic bellow (hence the Melvins comparison), there are some surprising melodies too, even some hooks, but they're less noticeable once they've been stretched way out and slowed way down. The songs often fracture into lurching lumbering stop/start workouts, or disappear in squalls of white noise, slipping into near-grooves, before splintering into something much more abstract and dirgey. The closer is the fastest of the bunch, but even then it's still basically a crawl, but when the drums and the riffs fall just right, and the band lock into a serious chunk of blackened chugging sludge, these guys become fucking monstrous, and that sort of sonic power and black hole metallic fury, should have all those other modern death metal outfits looking over their shoulders, and running for their lives.
This new release on Ektro, the debut from Lusiferiini Armosta (which means just what exactly??? we forgot to ask, though it sounds like something to do with Lucifer, doesn't it?) is yet another remarkable side project of the already quite prolific Finnish band Circle, featuring featuring Circle leader/bassist Jussi Lehtisalo (here playing guitar and singing) along with a rhythm section comprised of Circle's sound engineer Tuomas Laurila on drums, and Eetu Henttonen on bass. Well as you know we're really into Circle and all the various Circle related bands as well, so the more the merrier we say. And, unlike many recent Circle side projects, such as the Steel Mammoth highlighted last list, this ISN'T another entry in their own burgeoning "NWOFHM" movement (though you might guess otherwise from the t-shirts the trio are wearing in the cd booklet photos: Anvil, Motorhead, and Pharaoh Overlord). Nope, though it's plenty heavy and rockin', this isn't any sort of metal, instead Lusiferiini Armosta are a band inspired by '80s and '90s noise rock and punk, with influences ranging from Flipper to Scratch Acid to Drunks With Guns to the Strangulated Beatoffs to obscure Finnish bands we've never heard of before. They also cite both Pissed Jeans and Polvo, and we can hear those, as well.
The band describe themselves as having "one foot on the throbbing jugular of distorted Finnish rock, the other in the tumble dryer of the noise scene of 1980's New York", that works too. The vocals are all in Finnish (with lyrics printed in the cd booklet we can only puzzle over) and sometimes soar in that monkish chant way that Circle like to do, especially in their earlier days. The first track here, for instance, reminds us of older Circle (circa Meronia) mixed with the more angular attack of something like Lubricated Goat, perhaps. The nine cuts here are all pretty darn catchy, Jussi's singing deep and melodic (when not harsh and guttural), alongside chiming and choppy guitar riffs, poppy but powerful, the whole record heavily infused with feedback whine and chaotic psychedelic guitar soloing, the songs often building into noisy, shoegazing blowouts. We could draw comparisons to both Japan's White Heaven and New York's Television.
Imagine if Circle had somehow moved to NYC, in the '80s, jamming with Sonic Youth, hanging with Unsane, maybe eventually putting out records on AmRep or SST. That's Lusiferiini Armosta. Pretty f'n cool! Jussi & Co. never cease to amaze...
A while back we reviewed a compilation of early Finnish experimental music called Arktinen Hysteria, that documented the lively scene there in the sixties and seventies, from playful goofy sound manipulation, to austere soundscapes, hand built instruments, vocal experimentations, freaked out avant rock and more. A pretty amazing document, that unfortunately seems to be unavailable lately.
Not long after we reviewed it, a Finnish label contacted us with an entire album from one of the artists on the comp, by the name of J.O. Mallander. To be totally honest, at the time we couldn't remember who was who and which tracks were Mallander's, since by that time the comp had been gone for a while, but we figured that folks loved that comp so much that a whole record by Mallander, regardless of which tracks were his would be amazing.
So we got the discs in and they looked amazing, gorgeous eight panel silkscreened sleeve, with totally confusing but eminently readable liner notes form Leif Elggren, and two front covers depending on which way you held it, since it compiled two different sets of pieces. We decided to listen to Extended Play first, two pieces, one from 1962, one from 1968. The first track begins with Mallander repeating a single word over and over. And over. And over. Well, weird. Skip to the end of the first track, still repeating that same word, over and over and over. Okay, we'll go to the second track. Hmmm. Same word. Over and over. Obviously being 'performed' live as you can hear throat clearing and seat shifting and foot shuffling. Wow. 13 minutes of the same word, repeated over and over in a deadpan monotone. Slowly shifting in pitch and inflection, but very, um. similar. But stick with us, after those tracks, which have now grown on us quite a bit, this becomes a super cool, super weird, and totally primitive turntablist / plunderphonic / mashup record. The majority of Decompositions, the pieces that make up the second half of the disc, is manipulated vinyl lps, 78's, 7"s, all tweaked and affected and fucked with. A series of smokey jazz records are slowed way down, pitch shifted up and down, up and down, warbling and wobbling, woozy and dizzyingly soothing, like listening to old jazz 78's through a funhouse mirror, melodies stumble clumsily into each other and pile one on top of another, jostling to return to some normal speed, some semblance of regular jazz, but continue to weave drunkenly, seasick and sleepy, drunken and druggy. Not all that different than stuff we've heard Kid Koala and other modern turntablists do which is pretty amazing. Then: a looped snippet of piano and a weary vocal singing "I'm Alabama bound" over and over, a seemingly endless loop, until the words stop making any sense and become nothing but strange melodic concepts, and then the voice riffs its way out of the loop, the effect similar to when a massive drone finally ends, there's that moment where the tension is finally relieved. Later: a record of thirties boogie woogie is scratched and skipped and looped and becomes a skittering, hypnotic, jumble of female vocals and jaunty horns, all sort of bouncing and hiccuping and skipping, creating strange rhythms and melodic fragments.
Probably the most compelling and amazing piece is "In Reality", where multiple versions of "I've Got You Under My Skin" are played simultaneously,piled atop one another, seemingly at random, performed at different tempos, in different keys, sounding a bit like a random round, until all of the singers sing the word 'reality' at the same moment, and which point the song starts to loop and repeat and blur, becoming a confusing collage of multiple 'reality's. Literally.
Been waiting for this one now for a while now, a killer collaboration between Northwestern drone/drifters Mamiffer (aka Aaron and Faith), and Finnish hypno-rockers Circle (aka Jussi and Mika), and this foursome whip up some blissed out avant garde minimal dreaminess, utilizing an old organ, in a nineteenth century stone church in Circle's hometown of Pori. The organ's lush chordal whir may form the basis of these tracks, but they are fleshed out by all sorts of elements, some you might recognizes from the members' other bands, some seem to have been conjured from the ether. Long stretched out tones, hazy layers of sonic gauze, wild keening violin melodies (courtesy of Mr. Eyvind Kang), scrapes and creaks, murky percussion, heavily processed vokills buried way down in the mix, the tracks super dynamic and nuanced, slipping easily from hushed shimmer, to howling squall, the mellower parts, truly mesmerizing, with hints of Morricone surfacing in the twang flecked dusky drifts, while the heavier/louder/more chaotic moments seem to be channeling all manner of noisiness throughout the ages, hints of free form floorcore, Japanoise, heavy drone, black ambience, but all masterfully sculpted into brooding, dramatic swaths of majestic minimalism, that seems to be constantly slipping into maximal sonic overload. Hushed and tranquil one second, tense and intense the next, whispery and woozy transformed into caustic crunch and heart-of-the-sun psychedelia. Some tracks unfold like some lost Circle B-side, Mika's strange vocals draped over flurries of acoustic guitar, simple tribal percussion, and that ever present organ drone, while others begin life sounding like some court music from the past, before morphing into something more ominous and gothic, a blackened neo-folk that would sound right at home on Cold Spring. Elsewhere guitar rumbles blossom blackly into something almost SUNN-like, which is countered by some Circle-like dramatic hypno-prog weirdness, operatic and over the top, before finally, resolving with what might be the prettiest of the bunch, the near ten minute closer, a gorgeously hypnotic slab of rumbling, whirring, shimmering dronemusick, that's equal parts barely there modern minimalism, and rib cage rattling low end assault, the end result, both harrowingly heavy, and blissfully dreamy.
This vinyl version is LIMITED TO 800 COPIES, in deluxe two part jackets, the fancy inner sleeves housed in a deluxe slipcover.
Yikes! No quiet forest folky revels here. Sure, last time we reviewed something by Finland's Maniacs Dream, an lp they did for HP Cycle a few years back, they were a sort of skronky psychedelic heavy freakout band, whose jams we likened to an unholy union of Faust and the Butthole Surfers. Well, on this disc they've gone a bit further down the freakout path. In fact, it seems like they set out to prove that Finnish peeps can make "Finnish noise" that's just as noisy as any Japanese noise. Turku Hold 'Em is just an all out assault on the ol' earholes, 68 and a half minutes of sheer feedbacking, crinking-cranking, screaming n' screeching N-O-I-S-E. Spread out over two long tracks with nary a respite, though sometimes the rumbling distortion will hold "steady" long enough to take the hardy listener into something of a drone trance zone. This happens more during track two (or maybe its that by track two, the listener is in a state of stunned submission anyway).
If this calorie-burning cavalade of chaos was by Japanese spasming noise outfit Incapacitants (subject of a recent 10cd box set), Allan here would buy this in a second. In fact, he's gonna buy it anyway. It's that good. And if good=noisy in your book, you might agree!
Another 7" slab of New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal weirdness from our pals in Circle. We're pretty sure it's them, it must be, that's Jussi on the cover with his hair in his face, posing in front of a dilapidated barn, and it sounds just like all the other NWOFHM acts they've invented that we so enjoy, like Steel Mammoth and Krypt Axeripper and Tractor Pulling and Motorspandex! And also quite a bit like Circle's own Katapult album come to think of it.
Bright burbling yet somehow metallic guitar riffage churns forth, amidst a warm swarm of distortion and synthy sounding FX. It's a lofi, catchy quasi-metal pop music, head bobbing if not banging, perfect for the rasping vocals crooning cryptic stoner hippie/hessian poetry: "One way road / down from the hills / straight to the cave of skulls / computer of yesterday" Huh? Or: "Stay with the rainbow / eat the dreams / burn the talent / fight the spirit / listen to soul". Brilliant.
And although this isn't black metal by a long shot, despite its Scandinavian origins, they did come up with one of the truly grimmest song titles ever: "We're Getting Old"! There's four songs here, 2 per side, the other titles being "Let's Eat Fire", "Agitation Evil", and "Kingdom Together".
Wonder if this band will someday do a full-length or if, as with most of their NWOFHM comrades, one 7" is all we get. Based on this, we'd be happy to hear more. Or, just more from the next new "band" these guys come up with!
One of TWO new rad reissues on this week's New Arrivals list on Jussi from Circle's Ektro label: the other one, a long overdue reissues of the debut lp from legendary eighties NY noise rockers Rat At Rat R, and this one, a collection of everything ever recorded (we think) from this SUPER obscure DC hardcore outfit, who shared some connection (and at least one member) with the late great No Trend. We consider ourselves at least a little bit punk savvy, and we had never heard of these guys. They did get a mention in the American Hardcore book but beyond that they were pretty much a mystery. This cd gathers up their 1983 demo (from which came their sole single) and a handful of unreleased tracks, all recorded by Government Issue's Tom Lyle, and while we were expecting just straight forward blasts of harDCore, which would have been just fine, this is WAY weirder and cooler, and it's easy to see why Jussi dug it enough to release it.
Sure there's plenty of blasting pounding punk rock, but that's only a small part of MFC's sound, they spend much of their time unfurling weird droned out atonal guitars, dense tribal drumming, thick buzzing bass, the vibe almost more gloomy and gothy than punk rock, check out "He And She", which almost sounds like it was accidentally plucked from the Rat At Rat R reissue, the same sort of gloomy noise rock weirdness. Or "Pennies From Hell", which is sort of funky, but still noisy and angular, rife with jagged guitars and a weird heavily effected warbly bassline, or "Penny Dub" which is exactly what it sounds like, an instrumental version of "Pennies From Hell" with the occasional bit of vocal chopped up and delayed and sent careening into the ether. Some of the tracks are dirgey and crusty and slither ominously, others seem to be typical punk blasts, but start out with weird dubbed out drums, and then have strange sing songy vocals, while still other tracks sprawl into dub-punk space jams, and even at its most punk, inevitably the band twist it all up into something seriously and gloriously fucked up.
WAY recommended, includes a fold out poster style insert with extensive liner notes.
A while back we made the most recent record from these Finnish spaced out psych-kraut drone-rockers our Record Of The Week, a single song, spread out over a whole record, rife with pretty much everything we love, crumbling distortion, swirling FX, motorik rhythms, lush swirling textures, heavy, heady, hypnotic, the kind of sound that should never end, even one record length song is not enough, total kosmische hypno-rock heaviness that we, and most of you, can't seem to get enough of. Sadly it seems like that record is no longer available, and word is, the band is working on a new record, a new SONG actually, that will fill up TWO whole cds, but until then, we got this new 7" to tide us over, and as is there want, it's just one song, about 13 minutes long, and another epic psychedelic space rock sprawl, one that sort of ups the sonic ante, taking the sound of that last full length, and pushing it even further out, a dark distorted field of slo-mo riffing, shimmering billows of blurred FX, and then the sound explodes into some seriously heavy, spaced out dirgery, echo drenched vox, simple Teutonic drum pound, everything hazy and prismatic, the sound shot through with swirls of synth buzz and spidery guitar melodies, gloriously epic and majestic, fans of Godspeed style bombast will flip for sure. Totally tranced out, transcendent, psychedelic, space-drone, hypno-rock bliss. Not sure how limited these are, but guessing they won't be around for too long...
Total "Arctic Hysteria" here people! We liked this a lot when we first listened to it, before we even knew what it was. Well, we knew it was Finnish (always a plus), and released on Circle's Ektro label (also a reliable indicator of quality). It's not another "NWOFHM" band though, or even any sort of Circle side project, or even really a band at all. As it turns out, the quasi-Industrial DIY soundscapes of noise and drone created by Musiikkivyory ("Music Avalanche") are the work of one person, Mika Taanila, who was all of 15 years old when this was first released as a homemade cassette - back in 1981! That's right, a Finnish teenager in the early '80s making monstrous noise/drone tapes, contemporaneous with the likes of Maurizio Bianchi. How cool is that? Pretty cool we think.
The 12 tracks here (resurrected from a couple of super rare tapes, circa '80-'81) are a wonderful witches' cauldron of throbbing rhythmic chaos, fractured grinding drones, strange voices, field recordings, and DISTORTION, lots of distortion... it's a playful sort of isolationist music, if that makes sense. And as an evidently artistically inclined kid he had every reason to want to express himself in such a fashion. Imagine being a teen with fears of nuclear war, living up near the Arctic Circle. The dark postpunk music (Cabaret Voltaire, This Heat, The Normal, Dome...) you were able to tune in to on the BBC's John Peel show might make a lot more sense than the "normal" happy Christian adults who surround you!
So Mika began messing around with tape recorders, cast-off band instruments, radio static, toys, primitive percussion, etc., and pretty soon had generated enough material to fuel his own bedroom cassette label (of which it's hoped that Ektro will eventually reissue more releases), which issued limited runs of tapes not just by his own Musiikkivyory project but also by other likeminded Finnish friends... and, in fact, one by Italy's M.B. himself! (A reminder that international networking was possible before MySpace came around.)
Ektro has colorfully packaged this in a fashion up to their usual spiffy graphic standards, the cd cover insert folding out into a large sheet with photos and liner notes (in both English and Finnish) on one side, the other a poster depicting one of the original cassette releases at larger-than-life size.
Crude, creative, and compelling, this is quite an interesting surprise, thanks Ektro!! We'd definitely like to hear more from this corner of '80s cassette culture, hint hint.
Also found we had a couple of these, never listed. Another band doing the whole old school thrash metal revival thing, this time from Finland. The cleverly titled Apocalyspe. Now Or Never is their debut full-length. While they don't quite attain the rabid off-the-rails insanity of our particular Finnish thrash faves Pyrotoxic (RIP), they're still pretty entertaining if you're into the current wave of thrash nostalgia. Fast, frazzled, chugga-chugga-chugga bleaaaargh right out of the gate, and it doesn't let up. Wretched vokills lay down the thrash law over pummelling battery and razor sharp riffin' guitar grind. For fans of Slayer and the like.
Nicole 12 is the sicko-noise project of Finland's Mikko Aspa who happens to be the same Mikko Aspa behind one of our favorite black metal hordes Clandestine Blaze AND serves as the current vocalist for Deathspell Omega. Along with running Northern Heritage (black metal label) and Freak Animal (for the power electronics and noise stuff), he happily toils in any number areas of deviant publications that involve considerable levels of filth and degradation. He's claimed that he has no moral dilemmas whatsoever with the work that he publishes, and Nicole 12 is one such project that exists by design at a uneasy end of the libertine spectrum. It's a thin line that Whitehouse walked between entering a dialogue about sexual exploitation and glorifying the negative politics of perversion; and Nicole 12 marches through a similarly uncomfortable minefield of the taboos surrounding the sexualization of youth and the commodification of the body. The politics of Nicole 12 require a strong stomach, and the power electronics are equally blunt in their cold, dispassionate constructions of squalid frequencies, body-shock rumble, and panoptic blurts of vocal command. It's very clear that Nicole 12 (and the whole Mikko Aspa oeuvre) was a HUGE influence on the early work of Prurient, right up to the point when Dom shifted his work towards the rhymthicist productions of Bermuda Drain. This album represents something of a conclusion of one chapter for Nicole 12's catalog, collecting all of the non-album tracks that Aspa recorded since the project's inception in 1999. Upon the completion of this album, Nicole 12 will only be releasing full albums through Freak Animal, or so it seems. Dare we recommend this? It is a pretty amazing piece of filthy-filthy noise, but seriously don't even entertain the notion of checking this out, if you don't know what you are getting yourself into.
The latest from local label Time Released Sound, and another fantastic discovery, this one a collaboration between Russian trio Night Shift and Olli Aarni, who is a member of a Finnish combo we have yet to hear called Ous Mal. Together, they've created a dizzying plunderphonic soundscape, weaving together field recordings, old Russian folk songs, popular song snippets, damaged electronics, all manner of effects into something that manages to be hauntingly atmospheric, but also quite musical as well. The opening track is one of the catchiest sampledelic soundscapes we've heard in a while, backwards melodies and warped pop songs woozily drift from speaker to speaker, surfacing and fading like sonic swells, wreathed in mysterious found sounds, and fractured melodies, very reminiscent sonically of Philip Jeck, we actually had trouble moving past the first track, it's so good, but once we did, there was more to discover, the record quite possible some sort of linked sonic narrative, the vibe definitely cinematic, atmospheric, lush textures, and an incredible amount of sonic minutiae, headphones are definitely the way to go. Music box melodies blur into the chirping of crickets, voices appear and disappear, samples fragment and fade, bleeding into one another, the sounds coalescing into lush sprawls of warm shimmer and epic expanses of near symphonic soft noise, before fading into intimate musical glimpses of some other universe, or some other time, each song a seemingly self contained sonic travelogue, or an alternate universe, rendered in sound. Really fantastic stuff.
The deluxe version is limited to 100 copies, and as as with all the TRS deluxe versions it is indeed quite deluxe, this one a super striking pop-up faux-rigami mini book, the pages of the pop up made from 100 year old hand written ledger paper, and bound in antique hardcover book covers, which are then housed in hand made / hand stamped black slipcases. The standard version is also limited, to 150 copies, and comes housed in a full color digipak.
Finland's self-proclaimed Undisputed Kings of Lasermetal are back! Note that 'Lasermetal' as a genre exists ONLY in connection to Nightsatan, and is definitely NOT actually metal, though these guys do look pretty metal - you've got one guy, Inhalator II, wearing all sorts of studded gear, including studded headband; another guy, Wolf-Rami, who has a scary skull face inside his motorcycle helmet; and a third, Mazathoth, who wears a Boba Fett style helmet, and a cape, and has antlers inexplicably growing out of his back. But they're an instrumental synth trio, not metal in the slightest, except conceptually perhaps.
If you recall, we made Nightsatan's debut album Midnight Laser Warrior an aQuarius Record Of The Week a few years back, blown away by their brand of "crazy, futuristic, electro prog", a soundtracky, synth-heavy sound inspired by John Carpenter and Tangerine Dream, not unlike Zombi or Umberto, but taking that into a ridiculously fantastical Finnish realm of over-the-topness. Well, with this new release they somehow go even FURTHER over the top, 'cause instead of just sounding like a soundtrack, it IS a soundtrack, to a real movie that's included here on its own dvd disc packaged with the cd. And the movie stars Nightsatan, playing themsleves, as surreal sci-fi superheroes wandering a futuristic wasteland encountering (and slaying, or having sex with) strange characters. It's an homage of sorts to Italian '80s post-apocalyptic exploitation cinema, complete with dialog dubbed in Italian (English subtitles are provided). It comes across like a mix of Mad Max and Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain, truly bizarre and absurd, full of gory special FX and nudity. Sex, violence, and synthesizers! Basically, an extended, insane music video for Nightsatan. It's a professional production, including some impressive special effects (it's worth watching the 'making of' bonus feature to see how they did it - 'cuz we didn't think they had deserts in Finland), with a plot involving, yes, 'loops of doom' - we can't explain it but it does sort of make sense. it's really a bit disturbing at moments, and twistedly funny too, and of course the music is pretty rad, and you can enjoy it alone on the soundtrack cd, which is twice as long as the movie, consisting of 14 tracks, 48 minutes of Nightsatan's retro-futuristic synth-splorations, droning and glistening, often underlaid with propulsive beats via Inhalator II's 'laserdrums'. Mood-wise it ranges from sinister suspensefulness, to exciting electro-rock, to maudin, melodic 'love theme' moments.
Fans of Umberto, Trans Am, Blizaro, Emeralds, all ought to dig - imagine a mix of all those, but with an added element of pure Finnish WTF?-ness. It's hard to believe that Nightsatan are NOT one of the so-called NWOFHM bands put together by the guys in Circle, like Steel Mammoth. But nope, they're just friends, apparently this sort of thing just what they do in Finland these days. Ah, Finland. Ah, Nightsatan!
They're from Finland. They're called Nightsatan. Their record is called Midnight Laser Warrior and features on its cover some helmeted ghoul with a knife, and a sawblade, and a bullet belt, and tons of spikes and studs on the leather jacket that barely obscures his rotting zombie flesh. They have song titles like "Four Eyed Cyclops", "Death Chess 2000", "Karelian Stairmaster (Evil Lucifer)". The record was mastered by two members of aQ faves Finnish hypnorockers Circle. We saw a YouTube clip of Nightsatan performing, where a certain member of the crowd got so worked up he decided to sing along, that person was none other than Albert Witchfinder of the mighty Reverend Bizarre (and The Puritan, among others). Their drummer is credited with player "Laserdrums". And most importantly, they play "LAZERMETAL". Which is in fact, not metal at all, nor even "NWOFHM", instead it's some sort of crazy, futuristic, electro prog, like Goblin or John Carpenter, or any of the current crop of Carpenter worshipping retro futurists (Majeure, Umberto, Zombi, Blizaro) but filtered through some ELP, or Yes, or even more obscure prog faves like Il Balleto Di Bronzo or the New Trolls. Sure the sound is synthy, and retro and electro and will no doubt appeal to those folks, but it's also twisted and proggy and FINNISH, which makes this something else entirely.
The cool thing about these guys, ONE of the cool things, is that they're a proper band, this isn't just a studio project, assembled at a desk with a computer, no these guys are a BAND, and there's tons of footage of them playing live, and most notably, they have a DRUMMER, who plays drums, electronic drums sure, but they give the sound a sweaty, urgent, human element missing from lots of similar stuff, not to mention, these songs are epic and complex and again PROGGY.
Opener "Four Eyed Cyclops" begins with a bit of Tangerine Dreamy synthiness, accompanied by some growled cookie monster vox, but it doesn't take long for the track to get going, with some awesome syncopated rumming, locked tight with the synths, then another buzzing bit of low end synth swoops in, and while it's not metal, we can definitely feel the same sort of power and energy and intensity. All the synths drop out, leaving just the buzzing low end one to unfurl a serious slithery riff, the drums come back in, and it's like some weird electronic electro-doom, the metal vibe, more in the vibe than the sound, but it's definitely weird and heavy and electronic, with lots of bent notes wound into electro leads. Awesome.
"Death Chess 2000" starts off with more buzzing low end synth riffage, some "Iron Man" style kick drum, before slipping into another bit of electro-doom, only to have everything suddenly speed up, and transform into a car chase Autobahn soundtrack that returns briefly to that opening electro doom, before stripping down to just minimal synth and a skeletal rhythm, and more of those weird raspy vox, finishing off in a blaze of swirl and buzz.
"Karelian Stairmaster (Evil Lucifer)" might be the proggiest of the bunch, another swirly Logan's Run sounding intro, all arpeggiated melodies underpinned by thick wheezing synth buzz, while the snare drum drives the rhythm, before blossoming into a hazy, futuristic soundscape (which more than one customer mistook for the Tron soundtrack! If only!), that warbles woozily, and eventually switches tempo and becomes the perfect score for some lost eighties VHS tape horror movie futuristic dystopian city montage. Throughout, the song offers up some strange detours, intense super dynamic stop/starts, with pounding drums, and some gorgeous woozy video game soundtrack balladry (which again has us thinking how much better these guys would have been for scoring Tron).
"Ninja Apocalypse" is creepy, and haunting, with the sound of fake rainfall, deep bass swells, and a main keyboard melody that would most definitely not be out of place in a Halloween or Friday The 13th movie, but like all the songs, the track continually shifts and transforms, minimal and hauntingly creepy one second, supper progged out and propulsive the next, soaring and majestic the next, and druggy and psychedelic the next. "Steel Diamond Part 4" (parts 1 and 2 are on the 7" reviewed elsewhere on this list, not sure where part 3 is though), is another electro prog workout, that features a super soundtracky main melody wreathed in layer after layer of synth buzz, the drums dense and intricate, the sound swirling and shimmering, evoking images of alien planets, of crashed starships, of subterranean lairs, of strange creatures chained up and walking into the depths, of the blackness of space, which leads right into the final track "Stars, Our Destination", which takes that space synth sci-fi sound even further out, pulsing and throbbing, the melodies tangled and intricate, hypnotic and totally mesmerizing, the sound dramatic and emotional and epic, and so totally cinematic, every track in fact here plays out like the music to some climactic scene from some lost eighties sci-fi adventure epic, with "Stars, Our Destination" being the perfect culmination, the drums less rhythmic, and more dynamic, pounding alongside the synths, the vocals more breathy exhalations, soon joined by thick rubbery low end pulses, everything growing more and more intense before fading into a swirling drift of warbly synths, swirling FX and whispered urgent voices. There's a short hidden track, another sort of Halloween gone electro synthwave, with a pulsing house-y beat, creepy raspy vocals, and a main melody that sounds like it had to be created for some horror movie, tense and intense, this final coda brooding and moody, but also propulsive and weirdly motorik, the perfect sci-fi, electro house, futuristic synth wave hypno krautrock finish to a pretty much perfect sci-fi, electro house, futuristic synth wave hypno krautrock record!
And all this talk of soundtrack and cinema is not just us, the artwork on the back cover, which features a modular synth, with the various patch bays altered to read as song titles, also includes various inputs for things like "Doom & Gloom", "Heavy Pounding" and maybe most tellingly "Extra Giallo". So good. Easily our favorite of this new batch of synthy soundtracky sci-fi sounds. There is vinyl, but it's not out yet, a few weeks still. And if you dig this, be sure and grab one of those 7"s too!!
If you found your way here without reading about and most likely buying the full length Nightsatan record, best to take a second and go check out that review, we get WAY more in depth there about the band and their fantastic futuristic sounds. And if you already added the cd to your cart, and just need MORE, then heck, skip the rest of this, and throw one of these in your cart too.
But for those who need to know more. Nightsatan are from Finland, and play "Lazermetal" which is in fact less metal, and more futuristic soundtracky sci-fi synth wave prog.
"Steel Diamond" parts 1 and 2 make up the bulk of the 7" (part 4 is on the full length, no idea where part 3 is), and is a sprawling synthscape of fat, fuzz drenches electro future prog, swirling synths, propulsive electronic drums, sweeping arrangements, epic swells, the bass buzzy and blown out, all wound into some sort of electronic krautspacefunk soundtrack. There are some breakdowns and interludes that are so thick and heavy, the bass SO buzzy, that it almost does sound metal.
The second part of the "Steel Diamond" quadrilogy offers up a plodding super dramatic space opera lazer prog workout, wild tangles of synth leads, evoking the final march up to the castle, the final battle, knights versus aliens, the vibe is definitely doomy, but synth-doom, building to a wild proggy break, that gets all electro-metallic before slipping right back into that spaced out synthy futurism.
The other track here, "Space Revenger" (awesome title!), is a pounding Teutonic bit of synthy electro prog metal, but with all the metal guitars replaced by MORE SYNTHS, epic and dramatic and intense and cinematic, with some surprisingly crushing parts that remind us a bit of MIDI metal (those cheesy electronic versions of classic metal sounds, YouTube it) but cranked WAAAAAY UP!
The cover art here is cool too, the band in metal T's and studded wristbands, huge black shades, obscured by red lights, looking very metal, with a shiny silver sticker that says "Finland's No#1 Nightsatan - File Under LAZERMETAL", while the back boasts two different legends, one reads "No guitars played on this record", the other "DEATH TO FALSE LASERMETAL". Fuck Yeah. Pressed on LAZER-RED vinyl too...
3rd album from this aQ fave band with perhaps the best "truth in advertising" name in the realm of psychedelic doomy druggy heaviness. They also have some of the strangest album titles too. A project of Sami "Albert Witchfinder" Hynninen, of Reverend Bizarre (R.I.P.) and The Puritan fame, Opium Warlords' brand of doom metal is often on the minimalist, avantgarde ambient side of things, and oddly prog-inflected. Sprawling Finnish weird-ass doom dirgery at its best!
These slo-mo riffscapes meld the sombre Sabbathy-ness of Reverend Bizarre with the more experimental, extreme likes of early Earth (Extra-Capsular Extraction era), some of the tracks being stripped down to just guitar only, others accompanied by the plodding of a live drummer, or the even more precise plodding of a drum machine. They can range from the somnolently super-sludged to the curiously acoustic, always massively moody in any case, simple and effective. Several are purely instrumental, while some feature Sami's deep voiced vocals ponderously intoning melancholic lyrics, like on the morose, majestic organ-laced 12 minute epic "The Self-Made Man" (which concludes with a noodling, jamming outro that Orthodox might do in one of their more Greg Ginn-ish moments). Sami also occasionally unleashes some wretched black metal style anguish in the vokill dep't. as well, as on the quietly despairing "The God In Ruins".
Depressive and dreary, but strangely comforting and beautifully mesmeric at the same time, Opium Warlords have again come up with a hard to describe, quite original slab of less-is-more, confusion-infused doom (or doom-infused confusion). Scratch your heads and bow down, as they doom on!
New on Drone Records! Ovro is a Finnish woman who has recorded a handful of dark, dark, dark electronic albums for the steel-eyed Some Place Else label. Her contribution to the Drone series curated by Stefan Knappe of Troum, features two tracks of underwater percolations and bubblings, not all of that far removed from the geothermal vent recordings that Jakob Kirkegaard presented through Touch a while back. On top of these thick, churning, low-end rumbles, Ovro musters an unsettled chorus of scraped guitars and found object manipulation that pushes what otherwise could have been a clinical investigation into geologic sound towards the sound esoterica of Cranioclast, Coil, and irr. app. (ext.). As with all Drone singles, this is limited to 300 copies; and for this edition, Ovro has hand mounted photo negatives to the covers.
Many of us can still remember the exact moment three summers ago that the Finnish group Paavoharju entered our lives. Their debut album Yha Hamaraa seemed to have come out of nowhere and soon became one of those records that we turned to again and again for an enveloping aural escape. So needless to say we've been anxiously anticipating this follow-up, and we're thrilled to say it's finally here. And in a day and age where quality control has been thrown out the window, it's actually pretty refreshing to find that there are still some folks out there with the patience and commitment to take their time in crafting their art, ensuring that it will live on in our ears and hearts for years and years to come. Paavoharju have done just that with their follow-up to Yha Hamaraa. With the subtly familiar yet fresh sounding Laulu Laakson Kukista, they have somehow raised the bar even higher, with a record that truly inhabits its own world. A place that is filled with flashbacks to a romantic and tragic old world, an oceanic daydream and a wide aerial view of lush green open fields where down below a secret magical world exists. It's actually quite tricky to try to describe the sound of this record as almost every song offers another view of their deliciously unique soundworld. Listening to Laulu Laakson Kukista is sort of like watching a Guy Maddin film, as the songs and sounds on the album feel as if they are at times in classic grainy black & white and other times in the most stunning and vibrant technicolor. There are songs that you could actually kind of maybe dance to ("Kevatrumpu"), songs that should be the theme of the Olympics the next time it's in Finland ("Uskallan"), and songs that conjure images of lost fairytales, musical radio plays, epic voyages, fantastical moments and interrupted daydreams.
It's actually so damn rare these days for a group to truly have its own sound but you just can't really compare Paavoharju to almost anyone else around. It might have been subconscious but after listening to this record several times we started hanging out a lot with David Bowie's album Low. As the otherworldly second side of that album brings us to a similar space as Laulu. We also imagine Kate Bush, Bjork, Robert Wyatt, Edith Piaf and Kurt Weill at the twilight of their careers, transported into the middle of nowhere in Northeast Europe, and dosed with some magic mushrooms before entering the forest to record a record together.
It's been a long while since a new recording has captured our imagination and allowed us to get as lost in its vision as this one has. Once again Paavoharju have created a collection of magical sounds that will continue to keep us warmly embraced and mesmerized with each subsequent listen!
PS: The vinyl came and went and we're waiting for more...
Oh how we adore the Finnish label Fonal Records -- home to the likes of Kemialliset Ystavat, Islaja, Kiila and Es. And now, won't you please kindly welcome the newest addition to the Fonal roster, Paavoharju! We can say that that welcoming 'em is not such a difficult thing to do 'cause they sure do make some wonderful music! In fact, Cup (and Jim for that matter) has listened to it almost every day since its arrival. It's true!
Note: We don't want to deny anyone the pristine 'first listen' magic that we experienced. We can attest that it was a sheer delight packed with many surprises, and our fondness has only grown with each listen. So if you want your introductory spin to be 'pure', please be forewarned that this review contains what some might call spoilers... that means stop reading now!
In many ways Paavoharju can be likened to fellow enchanting Finnish artists Lau Nau and Fonal labelmates Islaja, but their finely detailed yet loosely strung music is considerably more melted and collaged and electronic. Listening to Yha Hamaraa is almost like eavesdropping on a dream... or having someone else's heartbreaking memories come back to hazily haunt you. Sounds, voices and melodies drift in and out of focus, occasionally overlapping and seeping into one another. Sometimes it seems like you're listening to a rickety old radio with the dial set between stations so that the sounds somehow magically fit together. Odd faintly familiar elements make their presence felt such as in the ninth song where the male vocal melody brought to mind a twisted folk (and of course very Finnish) version of "Stairway To Heaven". The swooping, trebly female vocals find their own special place between Indian film music singers and the Southeast Asian voices that surface on the similarly (un)structured Sublime Frequencies travelogue field recording compilations. And reference must be made to Bjork as well! Now after having read this far in our review, you might find the very first track with its swell of distorted static-y noise to be somewhat unexpected, disorienting even, but we encourage you to go with it (and with us). Allow the wash of sounds to transport you into Paavoharju's intoxicating world. Completely and utterly breathtaking.
FINNISH MUSIC FREEKS HEADS UP!!! A brand new release from a name you may not recognize, but you definitely know some of the bands he spent time in: Avarus, Anaksimandros, Maniac's Dream�
Fricara Pacchu may have a pretty illustrious Finnish underground musical resume, but weirdly enough, he began his musical career as a rapper, though you'd be hard pressed to tell from this, his debut solo 7".
And while you can definitely hear some of the above mentioned bands in these three songs, the sound is something else entirely, much more jangly and poppy, three little chunks of druggy, dreamy psychedelic confection. The opening track has a bit of a Krautrocky groove, some Eastern sounding sitar-like buzz, and swirling clouds of trippy FX, but they're wrapped around some sunshine-y jangle, it's like Avarus playing Olivia Tremor Control. The second track is more lo-fi and druggy, a gorgeously plodding tripped out drift of woozy piano, still MORE effects, spidery guitars, all coated in morning dew and dappled with sunlight.
The flipside is a bit less poppy, a sort of noisy soft industrial, lots of smeared grind and clank, but piled atop lovely melodies and hazy ambience, and distant moaning guitars, and with a strange staticky rhythm holding it all together. It definitely reminds us of our favorite Finnish free folk, but also like the Storm Bugs or some lost recording you might hear on one of those deluxe Vinyl On Demand reissues. A gorgeous slab of damaged experimental psychpop jangle, we can hardly wait for a full length.
The packaging is extra special. Included with the full color sleeve is a thick eye popping book of Pacchu's artwork, 7" x 4", stapled but on thick matte paper, drawings, collages, photos, squiggles, snakes, motorcycles, garish colors, intricate patterns, negative images and more. Folks who dug the Glomp books of Finnish art will definitely dig this too, and the images in the booklet seem like what you might see if you closed your eyes and played the record. The perfect visual analogue for Pacchu's druggy trippy soundworld.
Funnily enough, both Allan and Andee independently reviewed this, each unaware that the other was also writing a review. Whoops. The above is Andee's, below is Allan's for comparison (turns out their duplication of effort was remarkably similar, which is as it should be we suppose!):
First off, that cover art makes this pretty hard to resist. A simple painting of a weird-looking furry cat sitting next to a daisy... with the artist's incongruously black-metal suggestive logo floating overhead. That this 3 track, 11 minute 7" is from Finland, and on the ever-reliable Fonal label, is also a good thing. Fricara Pacchu being a member of such illustrious underground Finnish outfits as Anaksimandros, Avarus, and Maniacs Dream is further reason to be interested. But the proof's really in the pudding, or in our business, the music, so let's take a listen....
First track "Bianca's Beachparty" is an uptempo, uplifting utterly psychedelic instrumental home-recorded techno-disco number that immediately makes us think BOREDOMS. Crunchy, burbling synths zig and zag over a steady, insistent rhythm. Magic. We're sold. The other two tracks, "Upsidedown Wind" and "Text-Message From Beyond", are equally cool, woozy instrumental space-outs, not quite so "techno" tho. And what's also pretty cool is the 42-page, full-color booklet of Pacchu's cartoon/comic/collage art that comes with this 7"! Lots of insane eyeball-joy to be had here. If you liked those Glomp books we've listed, you'll dig this. This 7" package is presumably limited, we have just a few and may or may not be able to get more...
Woah! Talk about an unexpected, yet killer collaboration. In this corner, arctic electronic experimentalists Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen (aka Pan Sonic), from Finland. In the other corner, blackclad Emily The Strange lookalike and psych guitar shaman Keiji Haino, from Tokyo, Japan. Both parties know a thing or two about manipulating electricity, noise, and drone. You'll hear plenty of that here, the Vainio/Vaisanen/Haino trio recorded live in Berlin, November 2007.
Heck, we're always happy hearing Haino in any setting, but it turns out that Pan Sonic are particularly perfect to accompany him, they bring the darkness too... note that it's usually Haino's unique presence that makes itself felt most prominently in any collaboration with which he's been involved (Boris, Merzbow, Sitaar Tah, Zeitkratzer, etc.), and such is the case here, even the title is obviously Haino-esque. And nothing else sounds like his occasional, anguished vocals, which when they appear here, are in stark organic contrast to the digital, mechanical machinations of his co-conspirators Pan Sonic.
Guttural throat-torn outbursts from Haino screech forth over palpitating drum machine clicks and throbbing low-end pulses. Sizzling buzz and whirr wreathe the proceedings. Haino's whale call guitar feedback breaches the dark void, Tibetan monks are channelled. The dynamics shift from mysterious quiet groans and beautiful keening drones to loud, out and out distorted glitch/guitar warfare... It's been a loooong time since there's been an album from Haino's band Fushitsusha, but this is the next best thing!
Well, we dunno if you can download a blackhole but basically there's equivalent blackness and gravity on this compact disc, that we'd be happy to sell to you. And unlike any download, it's housed in nice Stephen O'Malley designed digipack packaging with the artists' names in spot varnish on the cover.
It's not often you hear a record with matter-of-fact song titles like "Drums, Accordion and Ambient" or "Orchestra, Accordion and MW-radio #1". More to the point, such instrumentation is a bit unusual. But that's what we have here with Finnish accordionist Aki Peltonen's quite wonderful (and ever so slightly weird) Radio Banana. He's part of the music scene in Pori, Finland, home to AQ faves Circle, some of whom participate here (the cover painting is by Circle's Mike Ratto). Quirky and cafe/cabaret-like, Peltonen's accordion can be delightfully melodic, dancing alongside an 'orchestra' of trumpet, alto sax and trombone. Or, equally entrancing, it's sometime accompanied only by just drumming. In both circumstances, what might be too jaunty and 'fun' and NPR-friendly gets subverted by Moog noises and medium-wave radio sounds, seeping into these tracks from the ether and establishing the queer reality of Peltonen's Radio Banana.
The good news: at last, we finally got some copies of this recent vinyl-only PO album! The not-so-good-news: we only were able to get a few, not nearly as many as we'd wanted. And that's it, when they're gone they're gone. So, if you're a fan of Finland's Pharaoh Overlord (and/or their mothership act Circle, which this could just as easily be, sonically), act fast if you want one.
Some further info: the four (long!) tracks on Horn were recorded live at something called "Space Force 1, 2nd Flight" in Lahti, Finland in late 2010. Three out of the four are exclusive-to-this-record PO compositions: "Lalibela", "Solar Stomp", and "Sky". And then other one's a cover of "Revolution" by Spacemen 3. All are riffy, raucous, rhythmic noiserock, with some stray pretty piano plinking and enthusiastic crowd response whenever the band takes a between-song break. And the packaging is sumptuous, the thick gatefold sleeve bearing colorful artwork, band name stamped in golden foil... Limited to only 500 copies and as we said, we got all we're gonna be able to get, ever.
Well, we probably don't need to say a whole lot more, but absolutely have to quote the blurb on the sticker on the cover. Pretty much sums it up: "Horn documents 'The Lord' in their rawest, nastiest live mood. Like an early Mudhoney jamming with Crazy Cavan and The Rhythm Rockers, or Sonic Youth tearing it up with Elakelaiset." Yeah, we totally agree! Even though we've never heard of ('70s teddy boy rockabilly act from Wales, it turns out) Crazy Cavan and the Rhythm Rockers before, nor novelty Finnish "humppa" band Elakelaiset, neither. But the Mudhoney and Sonic Youth, we hear, yeah.
'Tis wild stuff, not exactly in PO's "New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal" style like their recent Out Of Darkness album, but definitely ROCK, channelling Spacemen 3 (obviously, since they do the cover) and Funhouse-era Stooges. But noisier! It's blasting, throbbing, distortodelic overload, that WE might compare to a rabid combination of The Heads and Circle. Awww yeah!
