Sunday, March 23, 2014

Aalto- Ikaro (Uulu Records UULO009)

Aaolto is a new 6 piece Finnish psychedelic folk rock band. All the info in the digipack CD is in Finnish but the band plays a lot of diverse and interesting musical instruments from all around the world and sings in Finnish. Uulu Records is a cultural collective that is involved in a lot of really cool and different artistic things, including releasing music. The CD features 8 songs in 50 mins. Ikaro starts things off with a repetitive line played on a string instrument and a drone slowly creeps in as the tension slowly builds up. The voice begins to creep in and then the drums and other instruments as sort of American Indian like tribal feeling takes hold. What a super cool track and it fades out the way it faded in. Vapahtaja is next and has a clarinet that takes the lead to start this trip to Morocco or a similar place. The female vocalist sings the lead on this track in another magical trip, which has a really cool middle section with harp and other cool instruments. Now it is time for Heijastumia and to go a bit further east with a bit of sitar and some sort of other string instrument leading the way to start before the male Finnish vocals come in and is traded with the female voice. Wonderful psychedelic music. Kastepisaroita I and II are next and it starts pretty mellow with just hand drums, clarinet and female vocal. The 2nd part has a sort of funk riff played on a string instrument and then the sitar comes in.Antero, who plays sitar, tambura and other instruments actually writes nearly all the songs. He had gathered together a great group of people to execute his vision. Sateentuoksuisia Unia features acoustic and pedal steel (or slide guitar), digeridoo and floating vocals. I really like the guitars and folk music vibe on this one. Metsätaloushöömei features some throat singing and an uptempo rhythm and also features banjo! Kuum Tytär ends the album. It starts very slowly with bits of almost all the instruments you have heard on the record at times mixed into a very melting, floating, breathing psychedelic flow. I was just melted away completely while listening to this… This is for sure one of favourite record I have heard so far in 2014…


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