Islaja, Keraaminen Pää; Kemialliset Ystävät, Ullakkopalo (both Fonal)

I spent a couple of weeks in Finland a few years back, an found it to be a beautiful and fascinating place. I travelled from the cities and archipelagos of the south and west, through the lakes of the east, and finally up to the cold and slightly bleak far north. But the most interesting thing about the country was its people. From Helsinki to Rovaniemi (yes, I went to Rovaniemi, home of the mighty Lordi), I met so many, well, so many odd people. I was accosted in a heavy metal bar in Helsinki: “why do you come here? Finland is terrible. Go home”. In the lakeside town of Lappeenranta, someone told me, pretty much out of the blue, that they were thinking about killing themselves. He then bought me a shot of vodka in which a Fisherman’s Friend sweet had been dissolved, we got drunk, loaded up the jukebox, and he proceeded not to kill himself. Well, at least not until after I’d left the bar.

A pilgrimage…

You’ve heard about how sacred the west coast of Scotland is, right? Well, I’m off visiting some of its holiest places, like the one above. This means that things will be (even) slower than normal round here for the next couple of weeks. I’m not sure what the internet connection will be like in the Highlands and Islands (although I’ll make an educated guess), so don’t expect any quick responses from me for a while…

Richard Youngs, Inceptor (Volcanic Tongue) and Beyond The Valley Of Ultrahits (Jagjaguwar)

Having been to some gigs at which people have performed songs (I swear I have, it isn’t all free jazz and drones round my way), I am aware that artists sometimes take requests for songs. This, however, is taking it to a whole new level. Here we have two new(ish) albums from Richard Youngs, both created at the behest of others, allowing them to (implicitly in one case, explicitly in the other) dictate the styles of the albums. Inceptor was recorded in late 2008 for the Volcanic Tongue label and shop run by David Keenan and Heather Leigh, who have been huge supporters of (and even collaborators with) Youngs; Youngs wanted to give them something in a style they would appreciate. Beyond The Valley Of Ultrahits was initially released on CD-R on Sonic Oyster Records after label boss Andrew Paine dared Youngs to make a pop album; it has now been (thankfully) reissued on vinyl by Youngs’s regular label Jagjaguwar.

Stephen O’Malley and Steve Noble, Cafe Oto, 18/08/10

Cafe Oto was packed out. And packed out with a slightly different crowd than usual. There was no jazz mafia block-booking the front row. Instead, there was a slightly younger, hairier crowd, with a number of young men wearing the ATP festival garment of choice: yep, the Sunn O))) hoodie. They were here to see a fully decloaked Stephen O’Malley, playing with the great drummer (and near-resident at Oto these days) Steve Noble, in the first performance of a two-evening tenure at the venue. I’m guessing it didn’t taken them too long to discover that a hoodie was a particularly brave choice of outfit for a packed out Oto on a warm Summer night. This was hotter than hell.

Speaking of brave choices, the support act probably pushed some of this uncomfortably hot crowd even further out of their comfort zones. The cellist Marcio Mattos (who I last saw at the Freedom Of The City festival, playing with John Edwards, Philip Wachsmann and Charlotte Hug as part of the Stellari String Quartet) played a solo set of improvised cello which made no concession to what was to follow: there were no periods of extended arco drone, for example. Instead there was a busy restlessness to his playing, and a focus on less common textures. Quite painful ones sometimes, like when he slowly scraped the strings with the sharp edge of a piece of plastic. After a dizzying section of fast pizzicato (someone in the audience actually passed out. OK, it may just have been the heat, but I like to think it was due to cello-related overexcitement) he began to deploy lots of echo, slapping the strings hard with his thumb to leave huge notes hanging in the humid Oto air.

Although Stephen O’Malley and Steve Noble have been members of Aethenor for some years, this was to be their first duo gig together. And, initially, it showed. The dominant Noble was off and charging a couple of times in the early stages, building to a furious clatter, before he realised that O’Malley wasn’t coming with him. The guitarist spent most of the gig frowning, stroking at the strings, coaxing monolithic roar and rumble from his instrument in Sunn-like fashion. Nothing Noble could do, from tossing cymbals around to beating on the skins with his hands seemed to distract him. When he gave up and opted to work in O’Malley’s sonic territory – scraping sticks across his kit, pressing cymbals down onto the drums – the set really began to work. Eventually, Noble managed to snare O’Malley with one of his hooks, and the two rampaged into some exciting free-jazz-metal territory, a loud tangled squall, brutal shredded riffs from O’Malley interspersing with some typically exuberant playing from Noble. The set closed with some intense bass from O’Malley, a deep Eleh-like pulse finally fading to black. This had indeed been hotter than hell, both atmospherically and – eventually – musically.

Maurizio Ravalico and Oren Marshall, In Thunder Rise (Not-Applicable)

Maurizio Ravalico is an Italian percussionist, and Oren Marshall an English brass player. Which should make In Thunder Rise a duo album, and most definitely the first conga and tuba duo album I’ve covered on this site (I’m pretty confident on that one). But look a little closer: there is a third name below the two headliners on the front cover of this new double album – that of Isambard Khroustaliov, the alter ego of Icarus’s Sam Britton, and one of the founders of the Not-Applicable label. Britton’s role is an interesting and important one – he was responsible for recording the two instrumentalists in a variety of outdoor settings, and for facilitating the introduction of a fourth, unbilled player into the lineup: the city of London itself.

Ikue Mori and guests, Cafe Oto, 12/08/10

With this residency at Cafe Oto, in a strange way it feels like Ikue Mori has come full circle. Over the course of these three days, Mori is playing with some of the UK’s – and indeed the world’s – top improvisers. Mori is, after all, someone who was once described by Lester Bangs as being the equal of free jazz pioneer Sunny Murray on drums, so she should be able to hold her own in a lineup which pits her in duo and quartet settings with the free jazz musicians Evan Parker, John Russell and John Edwards (funnily enough, John Edwards actually plays at this same venue with Sunny Murray next week). The difference is that Mori’s drumming days are long behind her now, she has favoured laptop in her recent collaborations with the likes of Zeena Parkins, John Zorn, and Kim Gordon, and also now during this first night of the residency.

Chris Watson, Whispering In The Leaves

It is pretty hard to get away from Chris Watson at the minute. That is probably because I’m kept locked in his dungeon, along with his collection of giant moths. No, wait, I’m getting confused. What I mean is that the remarkable amount of Watson-related activity in the last few months means that his profile has probably never been higher. That glorious Wire Magazine cover and revealing interview was followed with an impressive installation in Kew Gardens’ Palm House, a radio show on his Hunt For The Nightingale’s Song, and now a heavily over-subscribed chat with Sir David Attenborough at the Royal Institution. Still to come: a London concert with the percussionist Z’EV, a new CD on Touch, and his sound recording work for the BBC series Frozen Planet. All of which sounds great, obviously. If only I could get out of this dungeon.

James Blackshaw, All Is Falling (Young God)

By the time of The Cloud Of Unknowing, it seemed that James Blackshaw was such a proficient twelve string acoustic guitar player that he may even have been a little bored of people like me telling him so. Being compared to the likes of John Fahey, Robbie Basho and Leo Kottke would probably be enough for most (if someone even used my name in the same sentence as any one of those three, I’d be carving the sentence on my own tombstone and then smashing myself repeatedly on the head with it), but not for him. His subsequent releases have shown him deliberately straining against such categorisation; opening The Litany Of Echoes on piano (gasp! piano!) seemed like a bold statement at the time, but it was just part of Blackshaw’s ongoing quest for something bigger – something more complex, even, but not complex in the same way as that earlier work.

Ensemble Economique, Standing Still, Facing Forward (Amish)

A couple of years back I took a chance on the debut release by Ensemble Economique, aka Brian Pyle of Starving Weirdos. Released by Digitalis, At The Foot Of Endless Roads began with a couple of tracks of mimimalist drone, before heading into much denser and darker terrain, picking up tribal percussion and strange instrumentation as it did, resulting in the kind of thing that you’d probably hear on Singing Knives these days. As good as this was, it doesn’t serve as a terribly useful signpost for where Pyle has gone next. Standing Still, Facing Forward, the second release in Amish Records’ Required Wreckers series, feels like it has come totally out of the blue, adding strings, voices and field recordings to create something far richer, blending kosmische with minimalist classical to create something powerful and cinematic.

Phonophani “Kreken” video

New Ghost Box-esque video for Phonophani’s “Kreken”, the title track from his new album for Rune Grammofon. Lucky Dutch readers can see Espen play at the Bimhuis on 21 October, on the same bill as Oval.