Kemialliset Ystävät/Sunroof! Split 12" on Fat Cat Records (UK)

On Fat Cat Records' acclaimed split 12" series there's a new release from Tampere's Kemialliset Ystävät with Sunroof! (a.k.a. Matthew Bower of Bradford, UK).

Artist: Kemialliset Ystävät / Sunroof!
Title: Split #19
Cat.no.: 12FAT076
Label: Fat Cat Records (UK)
Date: 27 October 2008 (UK, Europe & rest of world) / 21 October 2008 (USA & Canada)

Tracklist:

A1. Kemialliset Ystävät: Taivaassa on loivemmat mäet
A2. Kemialliset Ystävät: Hyvällisen tähdellistä
A3. Kemialliset Ystävät: Yöllä tulen ja raapasen tulen karvoihin!
A4. Kemialliset Ystävät: Pirtua raamatun kansissa
A5. Kemialliset Ystävät: Tässä maassa kun näin makailen
B1. Sunroof!: Little Ornamental Lake Of Death
B2. Sunroof!: Spiritual Forgery
B3. Sunroof!: Extinction Fantasy

Press release notes from Fat Cat Records:

Another album-length release, the nineteenth 12” in our acclaimed Split Series presents two immensely vital and influential artists whose fiercely focused and highly individual music has genuinely pushed boundaries and an aesthetics of movement / excess in two very different, yet complimentary ways, creating their own distinctive sound-worlds.

Led by Jan Anderzén, Kemialliset Ystävät (it translates as ‘chemical friends’) are a loose collective from Tampere in southern Finland. Existing in dialogue amongst (and beyond) the hugely creative / diverse microcosm of the Finnish scene including artists like Avarus, Lau Nau, Es, Paavoharju, Islaja, Anaksimandros, and labels like Fonal, 247 Laatijaa, and Lal Lal Lal, Kemialliset Ystävät has become an influential node on the outsider noise / folk / psych underground, finding international acclaim. Whilst many Kemialliset Ystävät recordings are solo productions, Anderzén has also employed many friends within this scene as floating / occasional members through the years, and other players on these tracks include Sami Sänpäkkilä (1, 2, 3, 5), Roope Eronen (3), Niko-Matti Ahti (3, 5), Tomas Regan (3, 5), Markus Mäki (3, 5), and Elissa Määttänen (5).

With nearly 50 releases (in all manner of formats) since its inception in 1995, Kemialliset Ystävät has remained a constantly moving enigma. Almost entirely self-taught and using a bewildering array of instruments and approaches, their sonic arsenal includes detuned guitars, bass, traditional / vernacular instrumentation (mandolins, balalaikas, etc.) hand percussion, all manner of electronic instruments, effects, toys and circuit-bent items, treated samples and vinyl manipulation. Playfully taking their own unique and unpredictable path, they have layered and fused together traditional Finnish (at times almost medieval-sounding) instrumentation and melodies with avant-garde electronics, psychedelic folk / rock, noise, electro-acoustic, and percussive tribal rhythms, creating a sense of ritualistic magic and flexible, group-mind improvisation, with the whole often subjected to brutal and precise editing.

A dense, tangled mass of independent roots, their music is rhizomatic, richly textural and riddled with obsessive detail, bizarre juxtapositions and hypnotic structures. Patterns form and dissolve again before fully apprehended. Whilst individually marked, the five tracks they’ve contributed to this 12” flow together as sections of one whole to form a fluid, simmering and restless journey through woozy loops, blurred harmonies and vocal contortions. With occasional jump-cuts, and all manner of spluttering, splattering electronics, its shimmering sense of tension eventually resolves as forms emerge – sometimes fleetingly, sometimes with a longer, more coherent rhythmic / melodic pull.

Brilliantly twisted and prolific, Anderzén’s home-baked output extends beyond his music to a vast flood of drawings, paintings and collaged artwork. Fans for a long while, FatCat’s initial hookup with Kemialliset Ystävät occurred in February 2006, when the band were invited to play at FatCat’s ‘Open Circuit’ Festival in belgium, at which they also played a live improvised collaboration with Múm. A fantastic live unit, they will be touring the UK / Europe this Autumn.

Full press release notes, sound samples and related links @ Fat Cat

Kemialliset Ystävät @ Fat Cat

Avarus September 2008 US Tour Video Clips

Avarus live @ the Beach House, Pleasant Beach, NJ, 1 Sep '08


Avarus live @ Cakeshop, NYC, 6 Sep '08, Part 1

Avarus live @ Cakeshop, NYC, 6 Sep '08, Part 2

Avarus live @ Cakeshop, NYC, 6 Sep '08, Part 3

More Avarus search results @ YouTube

And also: Avarus live @ Death by Audio, Brooklyn, 6 Sep '08.

Furthermore, Avarus recorded on 7 September a live session at WFMU, which will be out later on.

Avarus @ Wikipedia

Avarus Story @ Cleveland Scene

Cleveland Scene features a story on Finnish psych/improv unit Avarus:

http://www.clevescene.com/2007-07-04/music/cosmic-or-drunk/

Oh my, they have also quoted yours truly in the story:

"Scoffing at the 'Yankee critics' who perpetuate this Garden of Eden rubbish, the Finnish blogger pHinnWeb (a.k.a. Erkki Rautio) recently posted a jpg of Tampere, the city where Avarus came together in 2001. The photograph captures an industrial river cutting through aging factories and black smokestacks. It's the Flats.

pHinn believes indie types from the United States and the U.K. need a haven -- even if it exists solely in their minds -- where they can hide from the ugly, post-9/11 world their countries have created. That place is exotic Finland, and you can get there by listening to hip bands with wondrously unpronounceable names like Kemialliset Ystävät, the Anaksimandros, and Avarus."

Avarus @ Last.FM

(By the way, whatever happened to MySpace Avarus site...?)

Kemialliset Ystävät: untitled

Also Tampere's own Kemialliset Ystävät, that harbinger of Finnish experimental/improvisational psychedelic scene (also called "psych-folk", even though I think it's as removed from traditional folk music as black metal is from blues), has a new album out now on Fonal Records.

Artist: Kemialliset Ystävät
Title: untitled
Format: CD/LP/cassette
Total length: 39 minutes
Catalogue Number: FR-50
Release: 16th May 2007

Tracklist:

1. He tulivat taivaan ääristä
2. Lentävät sudet
3. Tulinen kiihdytys
4. Näkymättömän hipaisuja
5. Solusyke
6. Superhimmeli
7. Merkkejä iholla
8. Himmelimenetelmä
9. Valojuopot
10. Kokki, leipuri, kylvettäjä ja taikuri (Enna 132 eaa.)
11. Älyvaahtoa
12. Himmeli kutsuu minua

Introduction & sound samples @ Fonal site

The official Kemialliset Ystävät site
Kemialliset Ystävät @ Wikipedia

Volcanic Tongue

A review in Finnish @ Noise.Fi

I Don't Live In A Forest

The mystical forests of Tampere for you

Talking about hivemind thinking. As I've already written in this blog, lately international music fanzines have gotten hold of Finnish avantgarde-folk-improvisation scene (one example here). What especially has amused me has been hearing the Yankee critics in their reviews spouting freely such ridiculous phrases as "the mystical forests of Tampere". The emphasis here is apparently on Finnish "exotica" style of idyllic rural landscapes, forests, elves and stuff, as imagined and fantasized by someone who has never been here. (Hell, I've heard in this context even some talk about fjords -- those exist in Norway, not in Finland!) Well, I guess there are as many different Tamperes as are people there. I used to live in its suburbs of Kaukajärvi and Hervanta, which were both a combination of concrete blocks of flats and forests. Now I live in mid-town, and the most I see during its long dark winters and rainy summers is dirty snow and slush, factories spewing out vapour trails, porno shops, white B-boys and hooded teenagers strolling around with bottles of beer in their hands, goths, senior citizens in their garish shellsuits, winos bumming money, darkness descending mid-afternoon during winters, and general bleakness amidst the yearly seasons of sub-arctic hysteria. Maybe I should relocate to suburbs, double my Prozac intake or drink more elf's pee.

Anyway, this new folk craze is clearly a product of the post-9/11 shell-shocked mindset. People obviously want escapism, a retreat from the ugly world of power politics, numbing mass culture, globalisation on the terms of the rich people only, general alienation and blah blah. I can detect a sort of regression to childhood in this scene, in its music and artwork on the records. People sitting on the floor playing acoustic guitars and toy instruments, creating noodling improvisations (now, musical improvisation is one of the hardest games there is; only very few musicians can do it with some skill: otherwise it will become only pointless free-for-all and disappear up its own rearhole). All very lo-fi, acoustic, "authentic", "natural" and "free". The days of hippiedom are here again. Everyone so sweet and innocent. All this reeks to me of a sort of cosy self-indulgence, which was mercifully kicked out by the late 70s punks. Perhaps we would need in music something like punk; not "punk" as it is presented to us by such pathetic retro-style bands like Green Day, but a similar attitude that the original punk had, which would have the 21st sound (not boring three-chord guitar sounds), would fit to and reflect the current mental landscape.

I used to see some of these artists and their gigs, clapped my hands politely, but for me "forest folk" has worn out its welcome. (And what the hell is "folktronica"? A monster obviously invented by trendy music critics, a contradiction in terms!) It doesn't speak to me about the world as I see it, things I can detect happening around me. I've got nothing against escapism: hell, I retreat to it myself all the time, but it makes me guilty too, since I believe (though are far from living these ideals myself) in such old-fashioned concepts as social conscience and even the responsibility of artist's social commentary. You can hide in your little circle of people like Finnish forest folkers do and pretend the global ugliness doesn't exist, but I don't want to and I can't run away from the world, and live in some mythical twilight fantasy forest.

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Some Google search results with the words "forest" + "folk":

1 | 2 | 3

Fffolk Vs. Electronicszzz

On his blog Voltage, Max Clarke a.k.a. Maxx Klaxon raises some interesting points about the current folk revival.

As someone who subscribes to ooooo mailing list (the home of Finnish marginal and eclectic music, among all with most of those folk(s) belonging to the "New Weird of Finland" movement lauded in The Wire and international zines) and has followed what people like Kemialliset Ystävät are doing, I find this quite interesting. I might argue that what I find myself attracted to in this sort of music (often called "psychedelic folk" or "New Weird of...") is not the fact that it is created with acoustic instruments but the overall spirit of experimentation that is found there: all those weird sounds and otherworldy ambience. Those are not exactly traditional strumming acoustic guitar by campfire sounds, but something totally creating a world one can call its own. Then, I'm not familiar myself with most of the other artists belonging to this alleged "new folk" genre, e.g. Devandra Banhart, so I can't really comment this style in general.

Musical "fashions" repeat themselves in cycles and have a tendency to reflect the general Zeitgeist: in unsure times people obviously have a need to return to the "roots", to what is "safe", "tried and true". Even then, musical experimentation and seeking for what is "new" is bound to go on somewhere in the margins.

To throw more gasoline in the flames: how much there is that is actually "new" in current electro(nic) music, and how much of that is only recycling what was already done in the 1980s?

Anyway, this seems to me to be another revival of the age-old confrontation between "authentic", "natural", "down-to-Earth" acoustic/rock music and the "artificial", "unnatural", "unauthentic" electronic (dance/listening) music; of which I grew up tired years ago after countless "it is/it isn't" type of arguments which proved totally unfruitful and counterproductive in the end. Doesn't it only boil down to subjective tastes, personal likes and dislikes? An artist tries to make most of those instruments and resources at his/her disposal, whether they were acoustic or electric guitars, violins, flutes, kazoos, washboards, Moog synths, Roland's x0x series, MAX/MSP, empty oil barrels or rubber bands. In the end it's creativity that counts, not the means to reach that end result.

New Weird of Finland @ Pitchfork -- Arttu Mouths Off

There's an interview/scene primer at Pitchfork Media about this so called New Weird Of Finland scene, meaning bands and labels concentrated on experimental-psychedelic-folk-freejazz-improvisation type of music. If you have followed The Wire magazine or some more underground type of music publications lately, you must have noticed that this is the hottest thing in music coming out of this country now, and not any more the minimal electronic music of Pan sonic or Mika Vainio (well, that's just their opinion).

As noted in the Pitchfork story, though, you can snicker any time when you can hear some of these non-Finnish journalists using the notorious term "the mystical forests of Finland", or especially "the mystical forests of Tampere", since this town consists more of dusty red-brick factories and smokestacks than of any hippie-ish pastoral idylls (as evidenced here and here). Tampere's suburbs and surroundings are a different thing, though... (Not to talk about my own personal vision of the Tampere town...)

Anyway, here's a funny excerpt from the interview:

"Many [early Finnish musicians] were technologically oriented; it was all about the new wonderful computers," says Arttu Partinen of Avarus, noisy jazz monsters Hetero Skeleton, and the Lal Lal Lal label. "Some such as Erkki Kurenniemi have futuristic utopias about computers taking over, and [that] being a good thing. After hearing one of Kurenniemi'a lectures, I decided I didn't want to have anything to do with his music."

Tsk tsk, Arttu... well, but before you jump into any conclusions, I know Arttu (the pic above) and like the guy; and even though we've had our different opinions on electronic music in the past, I've done some collaboration with him, DJed at his great Mental Alaska club, and his Lal Lal Lal will also soon release '(I Ain't No) Lovechild', the first 7" of our Kompleksi project. (Plus there will be another big project where both and Arttu will participate in, but you will only hear about it later.) In fact, if there is any local underground music scene, for me, Mr. Arttu Partinen is one person to whom you may say it personifies in.

---

Well, more Arttu's (and other Finns' adventures at Glasgow's Subcurrent festival in April 2005, as written down by David Keenan in his Wire diary:

"Backstage Partinen is drunk as hell and in everybody's face. He corners Nolan with the news that Virgin Eye Blood Brother suck. Nolan stays cool and shrugs it off, despite Partinen comparing them to '80s indie shoegazing'. It's only when he starts muttering about 'dudes' to himself and how he's gonna blow Wolf Eyes off-stage that Mike Bernstein of Double Leopards shoots me a look that says, this guy may end up on the pavement before the night's out. It's getting sweaty back here."

"Everyone has been waiting for Avarus -- Partinen won't let anyone forget them -- and they don't disappoint. Although there are extended sections of surreal gonzo humour (with Partinen spending long, uncomfortable minutes mock-masturbating an inflated balloon) when they do kick in they have all of the monumental, lumbering power of Silence-era groups like International Harvester. Kemialliset Ystävät -- like Es before them -- sound pretty different from what they do on record, with a ragged, loose quality to their sound that seems inspired as much by the interstellar improvisations of Syd-era Pink Floyd as much as UK free-form groups like The A-Band and Vibracathedral Orchestra."

"Suddenly The Fins are on the floor -- as well as some un-named guy who has cut his hair like Thurston Moore and who keeps running over to the deck and shaking his fist in the air -- and it's then that Niko-Matti Ahti drops in the moves that make his name at the fest, shaking his ass with the kind of abandon rarely seen in public. They send in the security to ask him to dance 'more sedately'. They know he's dangerous."

Mental Alaska And The New Weird Of America

(Arttu Partinen and Jan Anderzén of Mental Alaska club)

Exposing the idea of conventionally linear time and associated moments of progress and modernity as an essentially arbitrary, artificial construct was always a key part of the psychedelic experience. It's no surprise, then, that from this vantage point, the way psychedelic music has developed seems almost ass backwards. As part of the never-ending quest for a vibration so deranging that it would unhinge your skull for good, the most exploratory of today's psychedelic musicians -- Tower Recordings, NNCK, Vibracathedral Orchestra -- have arguably regressed, abandoning technocratic modes and secondhand signifiers ('technique', wah-wah pedals, sometimes even electricity) in favour of going caveman. In place of the marriage of superhuman technique and outlaw noise pioneered by first generation cosmonauts like Jimi Hendrix and The Grateful Dead, wordless vocals, atonal acoustic jams, free percussive punk-outs and an approach to structure primarily informed by the huge ensemble waves generated by Sun Ra, John Coltrane and Albert Ayler's orchestras now dominate. The music has come full circle, a marriage of avant garde and savage mind birthing, a primal music that is formally precocious. It really isn't about the notes anymore.
- David Keenan in The Wire review for Alkuhärkä by Kemialliset Ystävät

Last night the local Mental Alaska club had from the States Black Forest/Black Sea, Fursaxa, Christina Carter, and the local act Avarus ("avaruus" is the Finnish word for "space", they only spell it with one "u"); combining folk, psychedelia, drone and improvisation. Black Forest/Black Sea visited Mental Alaska already last year. The duo of Jeffrey Alexander and Miriam Goldberg, playing guitar and cello respectively, did some serene songs, which got properly freaked-out in the end. Avarus did a Sun Ra/Godz type of improvisation stuff with some suitably silly sounds. Fursaxa and Christina Carter I liked the most, they're both one-woman acts and with very good vocals. A Native American-looking Fursaxa sang in a very strong voice (a psychedelic Joan Baez for the 21st century?) and played maracas(?) and strummed chords from her guitar, also playing and singing along to pre-recorded droney sounds and vocal harmonies, which sounded a bit like Gregorian chants, some of it very ambientish and quite mystical. I liked it very much, unlike two hicks sitting next to me who couldn't get it and also had to comment it all the time Beavis and Butthead-like ("this seems to be a freak night", "this is so 70s", etc.) To my relief it was finally too much to them, and they left. After the gig I bought from Jan of Kemialliset Ystävät, who was selling tickets, two of Fursaxa's CDRs, The Cult From Moon Mountain and her latest, Amulet. Very sublime. Christina Carter was also lovely, singing with an angel-like voice (somehow I started to think of Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star) and playing psychedelic chords with her guitar. I would also have liked to have gotten her CD, but unfortunately I was out of money by that time. Well, c'est la vie. A big hand to Mental Alaska guys Arttu, Jan & co. for bringing these artists to Finland. Kulttuuriteko.