Finnish music

1. Ville Leinonen (sometimes assisted by the Valumo band) is an unpredictable artist. I haven't catched up with his latest projects, but the music I've heard by him so far has covered diverging grounds: trashy experiments in the spirit of Tom Waits' The Black Rider, radio-friendly suomipoppia and hazy dream pop. Kimaltavia Unelmia belongs to the last category. In some strange way Ville Leinonen manages to get away with cheesy and sentimental songs that could have been recorded in 1958 in New York, still sounding contemporary and, what is even more interesting, stretching out the sound to extreme heights of grandiosity without loosing one bit of relevance. The question about irony is open-ended. I don't know. He's not really offering baroque pop as crafted and developed by Jens Lekman and fellow Swedes. It's....fairy tales... A record where romance almost always aberrs into something scary or crazy (Listen to "Pikkusisko" and you will know what I mean). This record has been the soundtrack of two of my latest drunken escapades at Bristol. Ville Leinonen is good company.

There is something about Ville Leinonen that makes me imagine him in the Viking Line nightclub, dressed in a golden suit, singing broken-hearted ballads in a voice weighed down by many a champagne filled night, to retired people drinking their heads and tails off while shuffling from one end of the dancefloor to another. This picture makes me like his music even more, as a matter of fact. Ville Leinonen makes music that could be played on Radio Suomi at 4 o'clock in the morning, in between the news and some traffic information announced by some Pentti or Anna-Liisa.
2. I first heard the elusive songs of Tommi Liimatta's Absoluuttinen nollapiste in 2000. My linguistic skills with regards to Finnish are not excellent, but that didn't lessen my admiration for this guy's strange lyrics about Elvis, dogs, the weather - everything commonplace suddenly reappearing from the point of view of, what I would call, wonder. This was the early days. Absoluuttinen nollapiste were influenced by the flourishing and imaginative sound of progressive rock (Wigwam) along with, I think, surrealism. Since then, their style has approached the mainstream, and all that which created a sense of magic and weirdo existentialism has disappeared. Now, my favorite album by this band is Suljettu and it was released in 1999. Even though some of the lyrics create fun and dissonant images, there is a threatening darkness lurking beneath the surface and it is turned loose on the last 20-minute track. Lyrically, the band is rooted in rural settings; the village idiot, building projects, cartoons, family iconoclasms. It's a consistent record, a concept album, with songs that still create a weave with many seams. The element of progressive rock is still there, but the impulsive sense of fun that one hears on the earliest records is now exchanged with something darker, more restrained.

This record makes me think of my mother's family, their arguments, nagging, finnish-åländish, firemen, death, hospitals, secrets, fun.

3. The Tampere-based Fonal record label has stirred up some attention in the internationalized world of indie/folk/avantgarde music. I regard Islaja as the most interesting artist among the Fonal bands. From the first track "Laivat saapuu" on Palaa Aurinkoon, Islaja's second release, we are thrown into another world. She moulds her sound carefully, with a great assortment of instruments, and a singing-style that comes across as chanting, exorcising, calling upon. What is it that the songs evoke? Often a lot of things at the same time, usually leaving me with a sense of unease and bliss at the same time. "Uni pöllönä olemisesta" is a prime example of what this album is like. Eerie lyrics - an owl that you are turned into and the face that is yours that you don't recognize, light that is not sun but fire - scares the crap out of me, aided by accoustic guitar, melodica and some other sounds. The cosy campfire turns out to be a pyre.

--- I start to feel ready for diving into older stuff now. It's been a few years. Olavi Virta. Tango. Entertainment music. Georg Malmstén.