My impression from previous hearings is that Jani Hirvonen is a compulsive overdubber who doesn’t know when to quit, layering performances together into a delirious psychedelic swirl in hopes of a lysergic result. Today’s record is similarly oriented, reaching even higher extremes with cosmic freakery and intensity on these 2022-23 recordings make in Turku. At one time it might have been convenient to align Uton with “Finnish Folk”, a journalistic invention not unlike “New Weird America”, which covered a lot of the music coming from the Finnish underground from the mid-1990s onward; one of the more prominent successes was Kemialliset Ystävät, but they also blended free improvisation and psychedelia into their mostly-acoustic music with its odd song forms and highly idiosyncratic reimaginings of the history of free music. Even the use of the word “Folk” in this unhelpful term implied that we would be hearing songs and acoustic guitars and recorders, none of which was necessarily true. I mention this as today’s album What On Earth Are We Doing Here is mostly electronic (as far as I can make out), and its murky dimensions seem to be underpinned by queasy synth gloop, even as wayward guitars and fragile percussion are inserted into the upper layers, possibly joined by treated and distorted field recordings.

If any of this heightens Jani Hirvonen’s status as an electro-acoustic composer of some sort, it’s also fair to say that there is a good deal of spontaneity and instant-invention in his benign and balmy works, which is the only way I can account for the formless nature of these drifty sprawls. That’s not intended as a negative comment, and indeed the open-ended structure may bring the listener closer to the sort of enlightenment and epiphany which is suggested by titles like ‘An Astounding Notion’ and ‘The Knowledge of the Hidden Ages’. I shan’t say that hearing this record will open the collective third eye of the audience, but a bit of me believes we do sometimes need to work our way out of traditional, logic-based thinking, and this is just the sort of music to help you do it – inserting a rubber screwdriver into your brain, with the most benevolent of intentions. Six examples of Jani Hirvonen’s colourful and charming artworks can be found on the panels of this release, likewise collaged and layered and psychedelic, and promising the revelation of hidden beauties.

Steve Fricker is the English fellow behind this label and distribution channel of the same name, which began in the early 1990s and used to feature a good deal of hard-edged electronic noise for its earliest releases. I think we last heard from them in 2003 with A Marble Holder From Andover, credited to Onomatopoeia (a Fricker alias); as I recall produced largely by tape collage, which might be one area where he overlaps with Uton. From 10 April 2024. Available in the UK from Cold Spring.

A lot of the motifs there are I suppose common to other forest-worshipping cultures, but it’s enticing to find specific words for the experience. Meriheini Luoto’s music, on this occasion, does more than simply allude to the condition, or describe it; it actually invokes the experience for the listener, so that you too can slip inside the forest blanket and go away with the fairies. The previous record was largely a solo record with occasional contributions from Pizzicato Drops Orchestra, Minna Koskenlahti and Mirva Soininen; but today’s record is an eight-piece collaboration, employing a small chamber ensemble of violinists and vocalists. There is spare percussion too, and some wooden whistles, but strings and voices are to the fore. Eerie, small and intimate sounds emanate from this group, recorded at a medieval church in Karjaa in 2019; once again the dummy head technique was used to get that astonishingly vivid, yet other-worldly, effect.

Meriheini Luoto is credited with composition and with “improvisational methods”; indeed all of her work is a combination of skills and knowledge, including very intuitive exploration of timbral qualities and her own private experiences, added to her compositional abilities and her understanding of Scandinavian folk music. The entire realisation of this work has been planned and executed as a deliberate sequel to the first record; the 2017 album expressed the “struggle” of being enveloped by the forest blanket, but by the time of Metsänpeitto 2, the transformation has already happened. This shift in the narrative is expressed by enlisting more players, and deploying them around the concert venue (e.g. placing them in balconies) so as to surround the audience with sound. In this way Luoto is striving to realise two distinct soundworlds, herself as the person undergoing the forest transformation, the other players providing the sounds of a rich forest backdrop scene. Cinematic, dramatic, and quite narrative in intent; all expressed in sound, yet invoking many strong visions for the listener. The work is a real testament to the power of Luoto’s imagination, and her craft in turning these ideas into composed and replayable works.

We look forward to the third stage of this work’s development, planned for April 2020; she wants to do it with an entire chamber orchestra. This, from 3rd October 2019.

It’s perhaps unusual for free improvisation to opt for such literal and visual approaches in the music, especially when you think of some schools of thought who insist the music must be as abstract as possible, but this makes Winter Suite all the more enjoyable. My personal preference is for the slow, draggy and gloomy tracks involving much scrape and grind, a mode at which Hauta-aho is evidently a past master. I will use those grey grinders as a bleak soundtrack to next November, to hasten the feeling of seasonal affective disorder. Less keen me on the “jazzy” guitar runs from Kääriäinen when they appear; though sprightly, they feel a tad inappropriate to the mood; it’s like John McLaughlin suddenly surfacing from the middle of a frozen lake surrounded by rainbows from Vishnu. From 12th December 2018.

The CDR Saat Vapaat Kädet! (MAGMA TONES MGTN10) is a 2018 reissue of their debut from 2009; this reissue is only 20 copies, but if you think that’s small-run, try and find the 2009 original which was an edition of eight. The packaging here is very endearing in brown cardboard with hand-painted and xeroxed bits; even the disc is wrapped in a napkin. This one is less of a crowd-pleaser; and I liked it better than the balmy cassette. The sound is slightly more sinister, and the duo aren’t entirely sure where their explorations will take them, adding a genuinely experimental flavour to these sullen, growly drones. Track I is my fave so far in this “let’s get lost”’ vein, though Track II might appeal to more space cadets – it’s like a minimalist remake of Hawkwind, done by a covers band who are basing all their assumptions on the strength of a grungey bootleg audience recording. Many thanks to Jusso for sending these. From 31 October 2018.

On Edged Timbre (INTONEMA int023), the Horst Quartet are making a slow and scrapey sound which exactly resembles the noise made by creaking timbers. So they’re making a wacky pun about “timbre” and “timber”. In case we don’t get the point, we need only look at the cover image which shows wooden timbers of a building under construction. If anyone still hasn’t caught on, track titles such as ‘Two-By-Four’ and ‘Carpenter Ants’ should remove any doubts. Actually this is a very good set of (mostly) acoustic improvised music played by four talented Finns, including the guitarist Lauri Hyvärinen who has impressed us and horrified in the past, with his fundamentally “different” approach to guitar music. Also here Hermanni Yli-Tepsa (violin, objects), Taneli Viitahuhta (piano and alto sax) and Tuukka Haapakorpi (electronics). Of these I suppose only Taneli could be “guilty” of creating a recognisable sound – that of saxophone keys opening and closing – on his instrument. The rest is a delicious blur and blend of groaning and rumbling non-musical drones, sufficient to warrant a near-complete break with most European improvising traditions. Since I’m in no mood for “minimal” improv today, I’ll give this one five stars, or at least five golden woodscrews. The quartet may be conscious of their “let’s build something new” plans, however vague such plans may be; the titles ‘Unprocessed Dimensions’ and ‘Actual Dimensions’ promise much in that area, and suggest there’s a virtual blueprint they are all following in their head. The finished “house” that results from this work might be as open as the one on the cover; if it is, let Horst Quartet go forth and do more of this fine labour. We need more open music in the world.

There & Back (INTONEMA int022), the item by KickGuitarSinRun is a process experiment put together by Ilia Belorukov – he composed it and did the necessary programming, while the actual electric guitar is credited to Pavel Medvedev, who provided a few “sketches” for Belorukov to work with. As far as I can make out, it’s layers of electric guitar samples plus a computer sine wave tone and some hyper-active programmed beats, occasionally varying pitches and tempo changes. This is not unlike the impossible music of Act 5 (int008) which he composed for his band Wozzeck, and every bit as daunting; I found the monotony makes it largely unapproachable, with very little sublimation in the narrow confines of its tight conceptual grid. The point that Belorukov keeps stressing is that the music keeps changing tempo, but the listener doesn’t notice it happening. Well, so what? He’s a hard worker, but sometimes Ilia just doesn’t know when to quit. The very simplistic concept doesn’t really withstand being extended to this excessive duration, and it certainly does not develop over time. If you buy the hard copy of this, you can endure the videos of Darin Plohova and Anna Antipova running on the spot in time to this music. Like the music, they get nowhere. It’s like watching the workout video from Hell. The entire package only inspired me to realise the futility of everything.

The cassette tape is another one of the many split releases on the Spina! Rec label, which has already sold out its run of 25 copies. Bokom’s side, ‘Limpopo’ is a document of a live performance made in a Russian museum, where the duo of Konstantin Samolovov and Boris Shershenkov positioned themselves for an unusual performance. It seems that Boris had sound sources all over the museum space and triggered them using radio signals, as if he were waking up NASA monitoring equipment on the moon. Konstantin’s job was simpler, moving around the space and playing instruments. Nice idea, but a rather thin listen; what comes over more than anything is the vast space of the rotunda, and how inadequate are the attempts of Bokom to fill it with their puny, sporadic squeaks and twitters. But Ilia Belorukov, who recorded the event, assures us that this is intentional, and that the vast space of the Mayakovsky Library should be regarded as the “third performer”. On the flip side, Emilio Gordoa and Marta Zapparoli perform ‘Deconstruction of the Hunger State Of Mind’. Gordoa is a jazz vibraphonist from Mexico city who has a couple of releases on Creative Sources, and plays in Corso, Move, and Parak.eets; Marta Zapparoli has already come our way as a member of The Elks on the rather good Bat English tape, and has played more than once with Iganz Schick’s group. The single piece here is improvised electronic noise combined with some hesitant vibraphone-stabs, in a collaboration which the label describes as “microscopic”. Some nice buzzed-up textures ooze out, but I’m not feeling much engagement or interaction between these two, and the abiding mood is one of general uncertainty and vagueness.

One thing which strikes you instantly about this record is its vivid sound; it was recorded using binaural techniques, including the “dummy head” made infamous on that weird krautrock record by Sand for instance; I mean Golem, originally released in 1974. It used the Artificial Head stereophonic effect, which I assume is the same thing. The listener is obliged to pay attention to the bleak and brittle sounds on offer. At times it’s as though we’re cornered, at other times we feel alone in a clearing where there’s no shelter and the wild beasts are circling in around us. Meriheini Luoto throws herself into her work; on part IV especially, there’s a sense that she’s dancing around possessed like a mad woman, so energetic and crazed are her violin swoops and swipes. Other parts of the suite however are less alarming, and if we can detect an inflection of folk-music tunes on part II, I think this is deliberate; the “story behind the album”, as she calls it, indicates her preoccupation with Nordic folk songs and stories, and the image of the forest kept cropping up in her research (along with latterday concerns such as scientific research and articles about the environment).

In seeking to evoke the “all-encompassing experience of the forest”, the debut concert performance involved a certain amount a stage-craft, hiding four other players in the balconies of the venue while she remained at the front of the hall. This unorthodox set-up created sounds whose sources were not immediately clear to the audience. Through a combination of craft and imagination (she was constantly thinking about a forest as she played), Metsänpeitto arrives at this unusual mix of “a silence with a sound”, and the intensity of her conviction brings the work to life in the mind of the listener. We are drawn in by the eerie beauty of the music, then find the forest walls closing around us; the word Metsänpeitto translates as “covered by forest”. Very glad to have received, and heard, this excellent piece of work. From 20 September 2017.

While he deigns to mention John Cage in his notes, there’s no credit given to Keith Tippett for instance, the great English improviser whose sensitive preparations for the concert grand piano are non-pareil in my view. But Vainio wishes to entertain, and his flair for showmanship knows no bounds; his piano has recently undergone the “pimp-my-ride” treatment from a painter named Alexander Salvesen, who painted it in cheerful colours. The instrument is also now kitted out with lights, so I imagine it now resembles a cross between a Wurlitzer jukebox and Paul McCartney’s psychedelic piano. Vainio is proud of the “different layers of sound” he creates, and enjoys the multiple percussive and harmonic effects he is able to bring forth, and not just with his fingers – mallets and brushes are also employed in performance.

The short pieces on Nocturnal are certainly entertaining, and his performances do have a certain attack and elan, but I find his compositional skills rather limited; a lot of the melodies aren’t far away from cinema advert music, full of empty repetitions and simplistic arpeggios. But he may not have any leanings towards being taken seriously as a classical composer, despite any superficial resemblance his music may have to Philip Glass, and there’s much to enjoy in his distinctive sound, which he describes as “acoustic piano beats”. From 27th September 2017.

After this the remaining members of Swissair piled into the house to record ‘We Could Interview Passers-By If They Seem Friendly”. The story here has all the hallmarks of how great post-punk music got made – achieved in the small hours of the morning, recorded in a public park, battery operated equipment, toy instruments. Using these unpromising elements, the six-piece embarked upon their idea of what “free improvisation” should be. The results – strung-out, disconnected, in need of some strong coffee – are just wonderful. Alternative TV and The Door And The Window could not have bettered this in their day, not even if they took a cocktail of downers and moved to Iceland. The finishing touch for me is when the birds start waking up and add their dawn chorus to the plunking, pecking and strumming antics of these young Finnish loons. For all its misfires and tentative stabs, this remains a radical document of raw genius.

b side of tape sees a return to a somewhat more “conventional” rock music setup, as Swissair blam out their Velvet Underground and Wire fantasies with a two-guitar, bass and drums combo. Well, that’s not strictly accurate. The fact is they wanted to create the most disconnected, formless and non-harmonic rock music they possibly could; a plan that’s reflected almost directly in the long title of the first track here, with its ambition to create a new musical notation system. They were inspired to do this by the thoughts of Brian Eno, a fellow who has a lot to answer for, and one of their methods to deflect common sense was to wear isolating headphones so they couldn’t hear each other. Anything to avoid that “default” mode of playing and accidentally lapse into patterns or playing a conventional “riff”. The tension – and it’s a strong tension – comes from those VU-Wire aspirations, which evidently couldn’t help surfacing in spite of Swissair’s best efforts to suppress their natural instincts. You can imagine the hullaballoo if Anton’s mum had come home at any time during these recordings, but to me it’s just one more measure of their success. “A specific kind of collapsing rock,” is the apt description printed on the press notes here. And to think people give credit to Keiji Haino being the sole perpetrator of this type sound, e.g. on Allegorical Misunderstanding…score another goal for Helsinki. All in all, I don’t see how any sane person could resist wanting a copy of this astonishing release. From 12th June 2017.

Today’s cassette Joopla Joo (RUTON MUSIC RUT-020) was recorded in 1985, now remastered in 2017, and contains 16 songs from this fertile period in Koskinen’s creative career, when he was still a disaffected 20-something with his sideways observations about the trivia of life. I might want to mention that the songs, and their titles, are all in Finnish – so as an English speaker I’m unable to offer any insights as to the penetrating truths of Koskinen’s lyrical nuggets. Helpfully the press notes indicate they are about “bizarre details of…various situations…[such as] the seawater being too salty.”

He plays keyboards, guitars, drum machines, and sings; I suppose with some imagination one could hear a home-made version of what passed for commercial electro-pop in 1985, such as hits like ‘Take On Me’ by A-Ha. For some reason that’s the only one I can think of right now. However, Koskinen eschews the upbeat shiny optimism of the dancefloor in favour of something much more endearingly clunky and slightly forlorn. Those wobbly synth solos and ploddy beats of his really reach the listener in a way which commercial producers simply wouldn’t understand. His singing may appear a tad lugubrious, but at least it’s honest and heartfelt, unadorned by studio effects like echo or reverb, and the overall effect is like one of Robert Wyatt’s solo LPs from this time, such as Old Rottenhat. Nice. From 12th June 2017.