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.
Maybe it is something to do with the climate, the cold weather, and especially those never ending winter nights; it certainly isn’t anything to do with the standard of living, which is amongst the highest in the world, good education enabling men in bars to be able to deliver disconcerting suicide pledges in remarkably good English. A recent report showing that the Finns drink more than any other nation didn’t come as much of a surprise to me after that visit, but there seems to be another consequence of this strange mindset, and one perhaps related to the fact that Finland is so cut-off from the rest of Europe, linguistically and geographically (you can travel into the frozen parts of Norway easily, or the barren western section of Russia if you have the right visas – but who’d want to do that?): The Finns have a pretty thriving, and very individual cultural scene.
You’d perhaps expect there to be a lot going on in a more cosmopolitan city like Helsinki, but in smaller places like Tampere and Turku it felt even stronger, and more distinctive, with lots of experimental jazz and folk taking place in some quirky little venues. One of the most prominent results of this was the relative success of the (Tampere-based) Fonal label a few years back, with albums by the likes of Islaja, Kemialliset Ystävät, Es, Kiila, and Paavaoharju all enjoying critical acclaim, releasing records that at times sounded like a bunch of Finns heading into the woods with guitars they hadn’t bothered to tune, getting smashed on Salmiakki, and hitting the record button. They had a certain charm, a very Finnish charm. It seemed to go a bit quiet last year for Fonal, but now they are back with a pair of wonderful-looking albums by two of their northern lights.
Islaja’s early records and live performances were very much of that unpredictable, even slightly shambolic, ilk. Could she even play guitar? Perhaps not in any conventional sense, but it worked perfectly, gelling with her intense performances, featuring raw and spellbinding vocals, delivered defiantly in that most impenetrable of languages (if the language of love was at some point found to be a member of the Finno-Ugric family of languages, it would explain so much). This was music that had to be made, and hence had to be made with whatever was to hand, which could not be constrained by technical ability, or by structure. It was gripping.
But from the outset, it is clear that Keraaminen Pää (it means “ceramic head”) is a very different beast. There is an openness to the record, a much cleaner, and more polished sound. The textures are primarily electronic, influenced – I assume – as much by Islaja’s time in Berlin as by her Finnish roots. The vocals are stronger, tethered to their melodic course by frequent use of multitracking. And the lyrics, while performed in Finnish, are also printed in English. It sounds almost like a pop album; albeit the strangest pop album you are likely to hear, and one which takes a lot of listens to get to the bottom of. The opening track “Joku Tu Radion” has a big “woah-oh-oh-oh” chorus, while the following “Suzy Sundetika” has verses you could sing (assuming you are Finnish. I couldn’t quite get my tongue round those). But the instrumentation behind this includes saxophones, marimba, piano, melodica and harpsichord, as well as electronics that burble and thump (the experimental electronic set I saw her play with Bevin Blectum a few years back at the ICA suddenly seems less of an aberration than it did at the time). It still has that “whatever is to hand” approach, but there is just a lot more of it to hand, and she seems to know what she is going to do with it before she picks it up. Above all, it is incredibly well put together. The juxtapositions can be startling: “Pimeytta Kohti” is particularly strong, with church organ-like drone mixing with playful melodica. And is that a pretty French horn under the crackling guitars of “Ihmispuku”? Translating the lyrics only highlights how intensely dark they are; in fact that word, “dark” appears in four of the nine tracks (others use “fog”, “mire” and “wilderness”, by way of dramatic relief).
Comfortingly, little has changed in the world of Kemialliset Ystävät. Well, I say “comfortingly”. “Bizarrely” and “hallucinatorily” would be more apt when talking about the latest output from Finland’s “Chemical Friends”. Once more, Ullakkopalo leads us back into the woods, ripped to the tits on mushrooms and whatever else we’ve found on the forest floor, listening to the rain pouring through the canopy, fiddling with short-wave radio sets, engaging in tribal drum circles, and chanting. Their own peculiar, and strangely welcoming, jumble of a soundworld. When it all comes together in something like the fuzzy kosmische dream-stomp of “Palava Puolokka”, it even begins to make a little sense. As well as nominal leader Jan Anderzen, the album includes contributions from Jussi Lehtisalo from the mighty Circle, Pekko Kappi (whose Vuonno 86 album on Singing Knives I’m still nuts about), Astral Social Club’s Neil Campbell, and C Spencer Yeh (of Burning Star Core, amongst others). Individual identities matter little in this commune, however. Even the album cover is a crazy, colourful collage of castles, snakes, and, er, fruit. And the booklet (both of these albums are luxuriously packaged) mixes stories about the Emperor Asoka, geometric patterns, purpose-built animals and a Finnish man who beat his neighbour to death because he mistook him for “a fuming horse”. Ah, those crazy Finns. I wouldn’t have them any other way.
Ullakkopalo is released on September 13, and Keraaminen Pää one week later. Visit the Fonal website for more.
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