Kemialliset Ystävät - Ullakkopalo

Link Removed By Request of the Label

Genre: Experimental, Psych Folk
Label: Fonal

My Space / Web

Buy

Kemialliset Ystävät's Ullakkopalo is credited as having been recorded "where the horsefly slumbers." Its cover depicts hundreds of images, from lettuce to soft-serv ice cream and a snake, strung together in out-of-context, highly confusing fashion. And its liner notes are a juxtaposition of still images with stories about Emperor Ashoka of India, a market analyst and a 72-year-old man who hallucinated and beat his roomate to death. There's little doubt that Jan Anderzén, the man behind the unpronounceable-to-American-audiences project Kemialliset Ystävät serves to disorient. In fact, he has made disorientation into an aesthetic over numerous albums in the past decade, reaching a sublime level of hallucinatory lightness on Ullakkopalo.

KY's first album in three years, Ullakkopalo is a network of electronic collages unlike any other. Where some would use layers of electronic samples to build pretty or danceable soundscapes of warm and/or throbbing sound, Anderzén takes a decidedly batty approach, throwing gurgling, squealing and buzzing effects on top of one another, creating a messy and shaky thatched roof of sonic oddities over what are ultimately melodic, even beautiful compositions. This, in turn, has prompted many to classify the Finnish composer as a "noise" artist, due to the discordant and often abrasive nature of the elements he strings together. Yet, Ullakkopalo is not noise. It's not anything else either, though. One of its Last.fm tags is "Fonal," the Finnish label that releases Anderzén's work, along with like-minded avant-gardists as Islaja and Päävoharju, which is good enough evidence that KY, as well as the other artists mentioned, are creating music that exists outside of any known genre.

As truly bizarre as much of Ullakkopalo is, however, it's very much a captivating and exciting release. It's also a thing of obscure beauty. Its presentation may initially be off-putting, but with just the slightest bit of patience, its vertigo-inducing layers of buzz and whirr become stunning melodies. First track "Kajastusmuseo" doesn't make it any easier though; squeaks, drones and strange electronic noises battle each other over a steady plod, slowly reaching forward to make some kind of sense out of each confusing piece. And then-eureka!-the 80-second mark unveils an electric guitar riff that carries the song out on a raft of psychedelic majesty.

The album only grows more warm and inviting, albeit ever slowly, with each new track. "Kivikasan Rauhassa" finds Anderzén ushering in a descending minor key melody from the outset of the track, with distortion obscuring its ghostly, Finnish-sung vocals. The folktronic beauty of "Nitty Veden Alla" recalls a more left-field Tunng in its blend of accessible acoustic sounds and electro textures, while "Maksaruahoja" floats between a buzzing swarm of electronics and an electric-guitar shuffle that could have been pulled from a vintage heavy metal record. And "Ystävälliset Miekat" is a work of exotic wonder, blending Eastern-sounding samples with post-punk guitar a la The Cure.

Out of context, almost nothing about Ullakkopalo makes any sense, from artwork to liner notes, to the hundreds of head-trip samples that erupt throughout its 14 tracks. Funny thing, then, that when the pieces come together, they come to form nothing less than mesmerizing sonic art. It's disorienting, discordant, and sometimes just outright weird, but extremely rewarding for those that dare attempt to soak in all of its head-spinning magic.

Andrew Douglas Rothbard - Exodusarabesque

Link removed by request

Genre: Psych Folk, Experimental
Label: Peaking Mandala

Buy

Exodusarabesque is an exercise in bewilderment. Much like the album’s title, the music Andrew Douglas Rothbard creates is the result of a surgery of different parts. And, similar to attempts at pronouncing Exodusarabesque, describing this music is an exercise in futility. Believe me, this being my 7th attempt at tossing words at the album, I am well aware of the failings of English (at least my grasp of it) in properly describing this mythical beast that Rothbard has created. However, don’t let my discouragement in trying to write about Exodusarabesque translate to discouragement in listening to it because what Rothbard has created here may reveal itself as the very best this year has to offer. Why else would I try over and over again to convey its strengths? I ‘m not going to make any overly specific claims here, but there is absolutely no doubt that I’ll be revisiting this album on Forest Gospel come December. That should be enough right? Leave you with an enigmatic claim without any semblance of an explanation about what you’re getting into. If it isn’t, don’t blame me for the description that follows…Exodusarabesque isn’t kind to those who try to describe it. But, here goes nothing: Exodusarabesque is a supernatural concoction of chaos gone right. In the simplest and most boring of terms, Exodusarabesque is an electronic freak folk collage. The closest relative to the sound Rothbard has created that I can think of is what Kemialliset Ystavat. But where Kemialliset often wanders off aimlessly, leaving listeners stranded in the middle of the woods, Rothbard maintains just enough structure to string you along. And don’t get me wrong, it’s great to get lost in the woods every once in awhile, but at the same time, it is infinitely better to have guide. There is no arguing with the fact that Andrew Douglas Rothbard work is experimental, but as with the very best of experimental music, Rothbard has just enough of a pop presence to make Exodusarabesque supremely palatable. What else? Oh yeah, the electronics. So, in addition to this incredible forest of organic textures, Rothbard has added an electronic edge that I have never heard coupled with free/freak folk. Exodusarabesque adds a glitch/hip hop element to these recordings that sounds like Prefuse 73 remixing Campfire Songs with Here Comes The Indian. You know what? Forget freak folk. Welcome freak electronica. I’m going to go ahead and quit right here. There is probably about a million other off kilter comparisons and descriptions I could throw at Exodusarabesque, but eventually this true chameleon of a record shakes them all off and stands alone, grazing on it all but somehow not becoming what it eats. As one last effort to convey my impressions of this album I will just say this. Recently, I have been compiling and organizing an obligatory end of decade list. While doing so I was surprised to find that I didn’t feel very comfortable putting anything on that list that I had listened to so far in 2009. It isn’t that I didn’t want to; it’s just that nothing stood out as strongly as records from the past nine years had. After listening to Exodusarabesque, Andrew Douglas Rothbard’s musical behemoth, that has now changed.

Review taken from Forest Gospel

Pocahaunted - Live From The New Age Cs

Not the original cover

Genre: Psych, Folk, Drone, Experimental
Label: Not Not Fun

My Space

Bethany and Amanda comprise Pocahaunted. Most of Pocahaunted’s music has been in the murkier, ambient sort of school of primitive experimentalism, but Island Diamonds is all druggy tribal rhythms and hypnotic dub jams, drenched in a grimey sort of reverb that smacks of the desert in a major Alejandro Jodorowsky kind of way. They’re El Topo on the streets of California, but they’re hard to pin down, extremely prolific, and always trying something new. They’ve now got several releases out on the likes of Not Not Fun (which Amanda co-runs), Ecstatic Piece, Arbor, Night People, and several more. (From Tinymixtapes.com)