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December 2022= |
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Jens |
Quicksilver Messenger
Service |
Moving
Statues |
Edena Gardens |
Anton Barbeau |
Martyn
Bates |
Sammal |
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JENS
- BE AS GOOD TO OTHERS AS THEY ARE NOT TO YOU
(LP
from High
On The Pyg Track)
Sweden’s
Jens Unosson is one of the few artists with
their own pedestal at the entrance to the
mythical Terrascope Towers. Head synth and
keyboardist in the mighty Spacious Mind, who we
first featured nearly 30 years ago now and have
worshipped at the feet of ever since, his
occasional solo albums have revealed him to be
an unerringly poetic country-folk composer of
hushed psychedelic melodies which occasionally
explode into torrents of sound like a
sown-swollen mountain stream.
Jens’
first solo album ‘Standing in the Trees I Get
Lifted by the Leaves’ was released in 2002,
primarily accompanied by guitarist Arne
Jonasson from the Holy River Family Band, the
Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Cauldron. The
follow-up in 2006 If You’ve Seen Me Lately,
Please Tell Me Where I’ve Been, saw Niklas
Viklund as the lead guitarist (Niklas was also
in the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, and has also
played in the Spacious Mind since 2000)
Jens
started writing songs for the third album ten
years ago “on an out of tune piano in front of a
crackling fire in the derelict farm-house I call
my home” but kept putting off actually recording
them - until now. Enter Colin Hill and his
excellent High on the Pyg Track label - a
marriage made in heaven! Once again Arne
Jonasson is involved: the material was recorded
at Arne’s place, with Jens singing, playing
keyboards and percussion, and Arne playing “a
multitude of strings, and better percussion”.
Arne’s guitar playing on this album is, I have
to say, absolutely stunning. It reminds me
throughout of Barry Melton; there’s also touches
of Richard Treece in places too. The opening
number ‘Horse Blues’ opens with a Grateful
Dead-like slow dance and a gorgeous guitar
filigree, and is followed by ‘Sweet Home Blues
(Redneck Dumbfuck Blues) which is one of two
songs accompanied by the Head Country Hoedowners
- the other is ‘Green Was the Day (Bottom Of The
Well)’ on side 2 - both of which are closest in
feel to Spacious Mind numbers, notable for
soaring keyboard/guitar crescendos (indeed that
guitar at the end of ‘Green Was the Day’ is an
absolute toe-curler!)
‘Linnet
Blues’ on Side 2 is probably the go-to track if
you wanted to tell your friends what this
album’s all about: the perfect coming-together
of Jens’ evocative vocals and almost Love-like
song construction and Arne’s gorgeously
understated, never overblown guitar playing. The
two stand-out tracks for me however have to be
the slow-burning ‘Owl Fox Sings’ on Side 1 which
features some of Arne’s most Melton-like
playing, and the very similarly paced title
track, ‘Be As Good To Others As They Are Not To
You’, which opens side 2. Astounding stuff
indeed, with Jens’ fragile, melancholic and
almost hushed vocals dealing with the death of
his father providing a poetic backdrop to Arne’s
carefully picked trills.
The
icing on the cake though have to be the
photographs that adorn the LP insert featuring
Jens going about his everyday life on the
homestead; the livestock, the produce, the
scenery. It’s like immersing yourself for 40
minutes or so in his vision of a communal farm
peopled by underground drop-outs playing music
to the trees. If there’s a place in the barn for
a printing press, sign me up!
(Phil
McMullen)
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QUICKSILVER
MESSENGER
SERVICE - LIVE AT THE CAROUSEL BALLROOM, SAN
FRANCISCO, 4TH APRIL 1968
(Floating
World 2-CD set)
QUICKSILVER
MESSENGER
SERVICE!
Don’t
get me started! Any excuse to extol the
brilliance of the 1968 formation of this beloved
group!
There’s
been tons of official and unofficial live
material put out over the years but this set
from spring 1968 is one of the best I’ve heard
from this era, certainly not far behind the
wonderful Maiden of the Cancer Moon double
vinyl LP that Psycho put out back in the 80s.
‘68
was Quicksilver’s golden age. Founder member Jim
Murray had left, their eponymous debut record
was in the shops, and the band had coalesced
into a formidable quartet centred around the
twin lead guitar work of John Cipollina and Gary
Duncan. This performance from Easter Sunday sees
the band super tight and on fire. Perhaps that
tour of the Pacific Northwest in
January/February with Garcia and co., ‘The Quick
and the Dead’ had given them that extra boost,
they needed. In earlier times they were known as
stay-at-home Quicksilver rarely venturing
outside the ballrooms of that city by the bay.
Taped
at the Carousel by acid guru and sound man,
Owsley Stanley III, this is an inspired
performance, the band alongside Big Brother
playing a benefit gig for the Haight Ashbury
Clinic. Opening with ‘Backdoor Man’ – an outtake
from that debut album – Gary Duncan milks this
for every last drop of its lasciviousness –
Dylan recently namechecked ‘them British bad
boys, the Rolling Stones’ on ‘I Contain
Multitudes’ but those English rockers are mere
fops compared to these Marin County knaves. Bill
Graham once introduced them as ‘some of the
baddest people in the world’ and this version of
the old Willie Dixon-penned, Howlin’ Wolf blues
holler hints at the machismo which would in part
eventually tear the band apart. Duncan’s growl
leaves you in no doubt as to ‘why the little
girls understand’. Incidentally QMS’s sexual
mores are luridly explored in Shelley Duncan’s
kiss and tell tome, My husband the Rock Star,
a very insightful dissection of QMS in the 60s
and 70s. and well worth getting hold of.
In
comparison, ‘Light Your Window’ takes the
temperature down a notch allowing bassist, David
Freiberg’s angelic lead vocal to gracefully soar
above the band. Paul Kantner once told me that
after Balin and Slick, he considered David the
best singer in the Bay Area and listening to
this, you can see why! What’s especially unique
here is the band bringing on pal, Steve Schuster
to play flute with them – hardcore fans will of
course recognize his name as Steve co-wrote the
stunning tribute to Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’,
‘Acapulco Gold and Silver’ another choice cut on
that first LP, whilst his sax playing beefed up
‘Pride of Man’ on that self-same record.
How
can anyone resist those big booming bass notes
that herald the arrival of ‘Who do You Love’,
the Bo Diddley tune which they took to epic
lengths on their sophomore set, Happy Trails.
This version never reaches the stature of the
live one which takes up the whole of the first
side of that second LP, but it ain’t to be
sniffed at. Whilst Duncan’s guitar break falls
short of his era-defining solo on Trails,
that doesn’t mean that he and Cipo don’t get
into some fascinating six-string wrangling here,
and Gary’s playing here reveals just how much he
was listening to Miles and Coltrane at this
juncture of QMS’s development. Interesting to
note, too, that Rick Griffin, who designed the
band’s fearsome, astrologically-based logo went
on to create a full cartoon strip based on the
song in his Man from Utopia comic book.
‘Babe
I’m Gonna Leave’ was a staple of live sets back
then, though it never surfaced on any of their
studio releases, instead appearing as one of two
Quicksilver cuts that graced the soundtrack LP
to the film, Revolution. The rendition
here is a cracker, especially toothsome are the
vocals and JC’s explosive ending. You’re gonna
want to ride old Cherokee up the St John’s
River, one more time – no wonder The Village
Voice once described the band’s sound as
like ‘a mental movie of the Old West’.
‘Walking
Blues’ is just what it says on the can and if it
doesn’t take wing to the hallucinatory heights,
the band attained at their best, it is a good
reminder of their roots. After all, these young
guns were always big on Muddy Waters, Robert
Johnson and Son House, the song’s composer. And
this hard rocking work-out struts its stuff in
Quicksilver’s own inimitable way
Finally,
we have ‘The Fool’. The sleeve notes wrongly
attribute Freiberg’s account of penning to this
epic to the aforementioned ‘Light Your Windows’.
He wrote ‘The Fool’ after coming down from an
acid trip – you don’t need me to tell you that
it is one of Quicksilver’s greatest moments and
contains the legendary Cipollina guitar ‘growl’,
vividly described in Deke Leonard’s Rhino,
Winos & Lunatics. This live version
takes on a psychedelic shimmer only hinted at by
the version on Quicksilver Messenger Service
– truly breath-taking – the interplay between
Gary and JC is just jaw-dropping and Freiberg’s
vocal hits those high notes with which he
struggled a bit in the studio. Phew! True sons
of the god, Mercury indeed!
Disc
2 is taken up by the just one track, ‘Silver and
Gold’. Entitled ‘Jam’ on the original tape box,
this is something of a misnomer as it bears no
resemblance to the aforementioned instrumental
that closed side 1 of their inaugural work. It’s
a fast-flowing bluesy shuffle and plenty of that
extemporisation that QMS made their name with.
Greg Elmore never usually gets much of a
namecheck but his drumming here is superb and
swings with the same rhythmic excitement as his
counterpart in the Dead, Billy Kreutzmann. Shame
that there are no credits for the other musos
who they were jamming with as there is an
organist, harmonica player and vocalist –
flautist Schuster gets a further look in, too.
It’s
a
drag that Floating World have failed to package
and annotate this release with the care it cries
out for. It can’t even get the title correct.
This live set was made on the 14th
April not the 4th – Easter Sunday as
John C reminds us at one point. And although the
band was still to enter my teenage psyche, I
turned 15 on that very date [Our editor, young
Mr. McMullen, on the other hand, turned 10 in
1968 and that WAS on the 4th April!] Poor usage
of stills and images, too – the flyer for the
event took me five minutes to unearth on the Net
but they didn’t bother to include it. Photos are
poor or wrong: the front cover shot was used to
stunning effect on that aforementioned Psycho
release and the inside first page of the booklet
sports a snap of the Shady Grove line
up with Nicky Hopkins. The notes are OK as an
intro to QMS but fail to inform on the CDs’
actual contents. And for fuck’s sake spell
John’s name correctly – one p and two ls. After
all it is original fans at which this is aimed….
I
love this but would suggest if that if you are
new to Quicksilver and want to know why we hold
them in such high esteem, then go straight for Happy
Trails, or that first album or the Maiden
set. Meanwhile Disc 1 will bring a huge
smile to the faces of long-time devotees.
What
a
band they were!
(Nigel
Cross)
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MOVING
STATUES
- TOWN AND COUNTRY EP / WONDERS WILL NEVER
CEASE EP / YOU LOOK LIKE YOU'VE SEEN A GHOST
(Downloads
from
Rusted
Rail )
Moving
Statues is a collaboration between Rusted Rail
artists Brian Kelly (so Cow) and Keith Wallace
(Loner Deluxe). Beginning in 2019, the project
involved the exchange of files and e-mails
plus a host of instruments both electronic and
acoustic meaning the sonic palette is both
wide and engaging throughout the project.
Kicking off with the ‘Town and
Country EP’, we find the duo sounding like a
playful Super Furry Animals with a Joy
Division bass line as ‘Broken Headphones’
throbs from the speakers with energy, the
soundscape driven by a melodic vocal line and
slowly shifting variations to the rhythm.
Changing gear, ‘Harmonic Hills’ is a
delightful piece of stuttering electronics and
sweet guitar, a mellow track that sways gently
like a summer meadow.
Sounding like a bizarre lo-fi trance
track run through a psychedelic blender, ‘Plum
Jam’ uses a drum machine to create a solid
base for other sounds to stagger and dance
above, slightly disorientating, highly
enjoyable. To end the EP, ‘the Wreck of the
PT280’ is a ambient piece that has a woozy
feel in places, drifting electronica that
offers yet another side to an EP that is
diverse yet cohesive, a good trick if you can
do it.
Continuing the fun the ‘Wonders Will
Never Cease EP’ opens with ‘New Year's Eve on
Mirror Lake’ a sweet Indie tune that reminds
me of Pavement, the music displaying a great
dynamic flow and washes of noise. As we
proceed, ‘Square Castle Smoke’ has some
gorgeous rising chords, swirling electronics
and an insistent electro beat, whilst
‘Blackberry Jam’ is a dark and distorted piece
of sound, rumbling bass suffocating the beats
before a guitar joins in striving to add
melody to the mix, the tune suddenly becoming
sweeter and filled with light, reminding me of
early Gorky's, which is never a bad thing. To
add a finishing touch, ‘Run Out’ gets the
Motorik heart beating, a nod to Kraftwerk
swathed in a cloak of Indie goodness ending
another fine EP that mirrors the previous and
remains highly entertaining.
As luck would have it, ‘Run Out’ the
final track on the above EP also opens ‘You
Look Like You've Seen a Ghost’
the full length album album from Moving
Statues, the collection containing six new
tracks plus six remixed versions of songs from
the two EP's. The first new song ‘Sad Dog in
the Rain’ is rather fabulous, a wistful piece
that has some fabulous vocals and a sweet
melancholic backing track, One of those tunes
that forces you to just listen. Maintaining
the quality, ‘Wooden Sleepers’ is a wonderful
instrumental that has a Canterbury vibe both
gentle and pastoral, a happy tune that will
make you smile.
Concentrating on the new tunes,
‘Cards’ displays some wonderful guitar playing
and an ear for melody, acoustic notes quietly
drifting across the room whilst a sympathetic
synths adds texture and even more melody, just
beautiful. Changing the soundscape again,
‘Moving Statues Go Raven’ is a slice of moody
Psych, a well-chosen sample ushering
stuttering percussion, ominous bass and
petulant synth lines, the tension high with
anticipation until a rumbling sequence and
rising guitar change the dynamics again,
although the tension remains throughout.
Using a more familiar song structure,
‘Time Signatures’ has a slightly unsettling
ambience, especially towards the end, whilst
the final new song, ‘Hold Your Horses’ has a
sweet rolling feel, guitar and vocals
combining to create a warm
and rather beautiful tune that drifts
wonderfully.
In a very satisfying way we end as we
began as ‘Broken Headphones’ completes the
album, still sounding mighty fine and rounding
off a fresh and original set of tunes that
should find a wider audience than they
probably will. The album will be released
early December, EP's available now, go have a
listen.
(Simon
Lewis)
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EDENA
GARDENS – EDENA GARDENS
(LP
on El
Paraiso Records)
Mighty
El
Paraiso has done it again.
Another record, another piece of
brilliance. The
foundation of the label out of Denmark is built
on three pillars: the unmatchable band Causa
Sui; a small stable of like electric psychedelic
bands; and endless fascinating combinations from
the collective of those musicians - such as this
new one, Edena Gardens.
The
band
is Papir guitarist Nicklas Sørensen, Causa Sui
drummer Jakob Skøtt (also El Paraiso label
co-head cheese and album cover artist), and
all-around multi-instrumentalist Martin Rude.
Rude and Skøtt are usually somewhere in
the center of many of these El Paraiso
collaborations.
Like
a lot of these projects, Edena Gardens manages
to create a musical identity all its own, no
matter how long or short the aggregation stays
together. Edena
Gardens the album is, like virtually all El
Paraiso records, instrumental electric
psychedelia. But
this flavor has a very laid back, gently
stoned 2 AM vibe.
Its brilliance lies in its…chilliance.
You can tell so by the sense that in many
of the tracks, drummer Skøtt seems to have to
work hard to play slow enough.
To
be honest, I’m not fond of opening track
“Æther.” There’s
not enough going on musically and at 10 minutes,
it’s too long. But from there, you have in the
remaining six tracks and 35 minutes an instant
classic. The
heart of the album are tracks two through five,
starting with “Sliding Under.”
Nicklas Sørensen’s electric guitar work
is psychedelic heaven.
He creates such expansive multi-colored
tones with delay, reverb and chorus effects.
On “The Canopy,” Rude’s electronic
effects decorate Sørensen’s spacious guitar,
creating a mesmerizing feeling, just the right
mellow touch for getting lost watching that late
night crackling campfire.
“Hidebound”
is
the album’s centerpiece, both as the released
single and the middle of the running order.
The combination of Sørensen’s slowburning
guitar and shimmering Mellotron swells is
absolute perfection.
Halfway through, Sørensen adds wah-wah on
top, which is almost unfair in its result of
pushing you over the edge of bliss.
It’s one of the most magnificent
psychedelic tracks of the year.
“Now
Here
Nowhere” builds on a descending bass riff.
Somewhere between Band of Gypsies
and Tangerine Dream, Sørensen and Rude send you
on a gentle ride soaring through outer space.
Closer “An t-eilean Dubh” seems like an
unofficial instrumental homage to Blind Faith’s
“Can’t Find My Way Home.”
It’s a slightly different vibe than most
of the rest of the album, but it doesn’t matter,
this is terrific stuff.
This
year’s
been a bumper crop for El Paraiso.
The earlier Jaiyede Sessions Vol. 1
by London Odense Ensemble and now Edena Gardens
are both classic contributions to one of the
classic catalogues in psychedelic music.
(Mark
Feingold)
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ANTON
BARBEAU - DRONES OF THE
PROPHET
(Available
on Bandcamp)
Something
new from an artist always willing to shred the
envelope and venture into unknown territory -
sort of running it up the flagpole to see if
anyone salutes. In this case, we
enthusiastically salute Ant for this excursion
into ambient, krautrockin’ instrumentals. Heck,
even the cover appears to be upside down! Head
music from a musical head case, several tracks
previously appeared on a couple of Fruits De
Mer’s “Head” albums (Head
Rush, Head
In The Clouds), so you know what you’re in
for, although Barbeau originally intended the
set to be packaged thusly.
With his trusty Sequential Prophet 6 to
the fore, we begin with the percolating pop of
‘Sunrise, Pt. 7’. Perhaps a little
Kraftwerk-meets-Giorgio Moroder, it would make a
cool soundtrack appearance someday. As for the
title, one can only imagine that the
musicologist in Barbeau was recalling ‘Sunrise
#7’ an obscure beauty from psychedelic Texas
curios Green who released a couple of albums on
Atco in the 1969 and 1971. Or, it could just be
your trusty reviewer showing off!
‘Berlin School Of Doubt’ finds Bowie
hunkered down in his Berlin bunker with Eno
twiddling the knobs and fiddling around with
spacey Tangerine Dream-ish floaters - a
celestial journey to another universe far, far
away…and far, far out! A true headphone
experience to “achieve total heaviosity” to
quote Woody Allen (from Annie
Hall).
The centrepeice (and one of the new offerings)
is the expansive mind explosion of ‘Gorge Drone’
whose 16 minutes cover half the album. All the
signposts are here - Terry Riley (Anton’s wife
owns one of the Prophet synths that Riley used
on Songs
For The Ten Voices Of The Two Prophets
- perhaps another source of the album’s title?),
the Beatles (imagine ‘A Day In The Life’’s final
chord extended for 16 minutes!), Eno’s ambient
music, and Riley and LaMonte Young’s Theatre Of
Eternal Music. Once you start to settle into the
harmonics of the piece, you’ll no doubt start to
“hear” imaginary music - sounds that your brain
THINKS it is hearing, but are actual sonic brain
farts (thanks George Carlin!) that have
enveloped your sensory receptors. Time delays in
registering the sounds also contribute to their
hallucinatory affect. It’s like swimming in
marshmallows or body surfing through a giant
meringue pie. Perhaps even a return to the womb
and the comfort of floating in warm amniotic
fluid?
The somewhat anti-climactic, but no
less interesting 60-second synth soufflé ‘Darker
Gold Sequence’ suggests Barbeau had visuals in
his mind as he was composing / performing, but
we’ll just have to go with the flow and create
our own internal music video. Another track that
sounds tailor made for that imaginary soundtrack
- or perhaps it will pop up in a real film
someday.
‘Whimper Flutes Of Tragic Beauty’ is
the perfect description for the dreamy closer -
mourning flutes flutter like singing bowls
conversing with bird-like evening songs echoing
across the room.
Jeff
Penczak
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KODAX
STROPHES / MARTYN BATES - SUMMER, CAT’S CRADLE
(CD/Digital
available from A-Scale)
Martyn’s
third release from his Kodax Strophes project is
an exercise in “unashamedly low-fi
industrial-psychedelic soundscaping” full of
found sounds, improvisational left-turns into
free association and dream time explorations.
Like last year’s Post-War
Baby, Summer,
Cat’s Cradle explores the experiential
space between inner and outer worlds in an age
of COVID and other activities that separate us
from each other, intentionally or not. “Know
thyself” is another takeaway: how can we
understand each other if we don’t completely
know who WE are? How can we use our inherent
abilities to understand problems in the world
and find solutions within.
‘Freedom Reel’ reaches back to
childhood puzzle play and spinning toys with
industrial sounds of construction sites and
rebuilding, a time of dancing the “freedom reel”
of joy and innocence and simpler times with no
troubles to distract from endless play and
self-entertainment. A cacophony of metallic
deconstruction, found sounds, and myriad vocal
inflections tries but cannot interrupt the
dreams/memories of “everything’s all right in my
world.” ‘Willow Wand’ explores those after-party
conversations where you dissect all the
conversations, furtive nods, innuendos, offhand
jokes and puzzling asides to get at the truths
hidden behind the smiling faces, backslapping,
and in-jokes that may reveal more about you than
you know. What are they trying to tell me? Do
they know something I don’t? Is there more to my
outward appearance than I want to portray?
Bates’ syncopated rhythms and curt lyrical
phrasing accompanied by a harsh dissonant
backing adds a deeper element of unease to the
proceedings.
‘Spikes/Inner World Of Science’ borders
on paranoiac uncertainty: echoed, monstrous
voices chase Bates as he runs frantically “in
& out & in & out the song I run”
till the song overcomes him - perhaps taking
over and writing itself…finishing the story? An
eerie treatise of writer’s block as the song and
it’s author struggle for control of the final
product. ‘Seven Glass Marbles, Origami’ finds
our hero sequestered in a small room of
comforting candlelight, succumbing to sleepy
thoughts as dreams take over in a form of
automatic writing, or more specifically
automatic painting: it’s dawn, the walls are
writing and without a thought, I am born - the
picture’s drawn.
‘Sunset Gun & I Want To Run’ evokes
more dualities of running from the world instead
of facing it head on: “I’m waiting to run/I’m
not their world - I’m running to the back of
THIS world.” Again exploring the spaces between
the inner and outer world of experience: which
am I more comfortable in? Many songs have
multiple titles such as the tender acoustic
daydream ‘In Child’s Time/Cumulo Nimbus’ full of
soft birdsong and cloud-gazing relaxing
diversions.
‘Hilversum’ is another experience in
external diversions - short bursts of lyrics
describing sounds of clanging steel, crackling
radios, visionary voices like ghosts singing in
the distance. I was reminded of the cave scene
at the end of Invasion
Of The Body Snatchers - a beautiful noise
in the distance that must be coming from
“normal” human beings - no one could approximate
such loveliness. There is life in THIS world,
beauty is a reality, not a dream that I must
escape into in order to enjoy my life.
There’s a hint of Tom Rapp and Pearls
Before Swine in ‘How Will You Know When Tomorrow
Comes’ not least from the lyric “My jewels are
the stars & the moon beside.” It’s summer,
and I’ll take you and make you dance and show
you my love… perhaps a reflection on a love from
years (life times?) gone by? Summer is a
recurring lyrical theme - several songs take
place in the summer, the season is part of the
album title, and the closing (title) track
announces “sumer is a-coming in & I hear it
in the drumming of the sun.” A child’s game of
cat’s cradle flashes through our memories, but
we’ve grown up and now it’s a time for
interwoven hands “closed and safe in it all.”
Perhaps we’ve unravelled the mystery of what
separates the inner and outer worlds?
(Jeff
Penczak)
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SAMMAL
– AIKA LAULAA
(LP,
CD,
DL on Svart
Records)
Real
live reviewer here, not the AI marvel ChatGPT
(though maybe it could write better reviews, who
knows?)
The
never-ending font of great Scandinavian rock,
psych and prog music lays another gift at our
feet from Finnish band Sammal.
They formed in 2004 and this is their
fourth album, in which they’ve downsized from
five members to three after losing their bass
and keyboard players.
According to founding member and
guitarist Jura Salmi, they’ve replicated the
keyboard sound with an effects pedal for his
guitar, though this is mainly a guitar-driven
record.
The
terms prog and psych get bandied about for
Sammal, but along that continuum what I hear is
closer to dead center rock, albeit rock with
some terrific instrumental flights of fancy
built in, and a bit of psych and prog around the
edges. The
songs on the album are sung – and Aika Laulaa
translates to “Time to Sing” in Finnish – in
either Finnish, Swedish, or English, depending
on what the band members felt would best fit the
mood of the song.
Like Dungen, without translations we
English speakers won’t know what they’re singing
most of the time, but we can certainly get a
feel for the emotions and vibe of the song.
And please don’t ask me which songs are
in Swedish vs Finnish; you’ll just have to ask
Sammal.
These
folks play a very enjoyable, accessible brand of
rock, on the slightly harder side.
They write strong melodies and are
excellent players.
Their sound is built primarily around
Jura Salmi’s guitar work and Jan-Erik
Kiviniemi’s vocals.
Salmi has a selection of cracking guitar
tones that are both vintage sounding and edgy.
Opener
“På
Knivan” is so catchy it’s almost powerpop, but
not quite. Another
highlight is (almost) title track “On Aika
Laulaa,” a rich multi-section rock opus with
traces of prog.
Some of the best playing – and listening
- is on instrumental track “ƛ.”
On bluesy hard rocking finale “Katse
vuotaa” the band shows they excel at playing
both slow/quieter and fast/louder, while Salmi
gets to play guitar hero.
Sammal
plays some fine prog-tinged guitar rock, with
enough variation thrown in to always keep things
interesting.
Happy
Holidays.
(Mark
Feingold)
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