Hannu Saha and Pakasteet – Taas Kerran, Äkkiä

Bafe’s Factory

Taas Kerran, Äkkiä combines traditional Finnish folk musician Hannu Saha, who plays the kantele (a type of Finnish zither) with the electronic music duo Pakasteet. A relatively new(ish) improv group which consists of Circle founder and Pharaoh Overlord member Jussi Lehtisalo swapping his usual bass for synths, drum machine and prepared zither with film director and visual artist friend Mika Taanila accompanying him on tapes and synth.

The fold-out poster enclosed alludes to the album’s inspiration. Each track’s starting point tentatively pencilled in, words that give fractured insight to the Finnish heritage behind them, a journey that fruitfully expands from its folklore roots to wiggle-room some modern tinkering, a clear improvised dance the pulsating centre of “Terveisia Laajasalosta” immediately hooks into. An ornate gothika tangled in triggered noises and gargled samples. A rhythmic build of swarfing twang and other delicate destructives, wrapping around you in an excellently observed and weighted dance full of triangulating choice and tapering texture.

The rub of halo(ed) metallics on “Irkon Ellot” dialling it all back in brooding excellence, silverfishing your head in iridescent injury as torqued and starlit shapes ripple through your speakers, the odd melodic decant flourishing in scarred reverbs then quickly swallowed back into the darkness. A Nurse With Wound-like aesthetic to saviour that’s sonically intense, digs into the stillness of that cover, the day and night of the outside veiled by that eerie semi-opaque wave of net curtain.

I’d love the album to continue in this vein, but the trio have different ideas and auto shift into a motorik-pop direction with the next track, “Vahan suolaa”. An excitable OMD-like sizzle to snappy percussives that you quickly assimilate, cleverly cross-pollinated by tasty off-kiltering skids and distorted recoil. A curious creature that gels a cohesive whole, a venturesome groove that wouldn’t be out of place on Pharaoh Overlord’s 5 album, its quivering optimism here avant-shadowed by plenty of effects candy and mis-shapen boomerangs.

An alliance the last two tracks totally run with, as the zither-dancing halflings of “Syysruhjeita” chance a tune. A light noir curving comfortably pushed this way and that, danceable fragments that catch themselves in the smarting synergy of flaking debris and abstracted voice, suddenly shivering out Kraftwerkian synth lines that pleasingly glow amongst the sparring weave and that disconcerting ballet of breath sounds.

A bountiful romance that falls into the teetered tadpole of “Taas Kerran, Äkkiä”, a gently roasted techno in the clang and crumpled other, its sensual swagger duclimer-frosted, stubbled in flat synthy stabs. Great stuff I’m eager to hear more of.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-