POLKU

In some Finnish review KOSMOS were described as tree-hugging hippies, which is really well said. Even on the cover painting of Polku ("Path"), a figure is sleeping on the roots of a tree. This far they've made three albums, all sung in Finnish. I've heard only this middle one. The female singer Päivi Kylmänen has sung also in another prog band, VIIMA. These two bands are however quite different from each other, and KOSMOS fits much better in Folk category than Rock (librarian's omnipresent need to categorize!). It nevertheless has enough proggy elements to fit into PA's Prog Folk category without any problem.

Their music is calm, hazy, slightly psychedelic and totally anti-modern. Influences seem to come from the late 60's / early 70's folk artists, mainly from England (FOREST, Incredible String Band etc). It was no surprise that on a tribute anthology (Tuonen Tytär II) of Finnish prog from the seventies KOSMOS perform a song by the late PEKKA STRENG, another tree- hugging hippie. The sound lies mainly on the acoustic guitar, warm & gentle organ and conga drums.

Songwriting is perhaps emphasized on lyrics, which are a bit naive in their mysticism. The album starts and ends with short title tracks (singing accompanied by guitar only), much lighter and happier than the rest of the album, and to me they are the least interesting moments, because they miss the charming haziness which makes the album worth listening. Only two tracks, 'Vieras kieli' ("Foreign Tongue/Language") and strangely named 'Omini'i Dakakos' are over five minutes. The length helps them to be sort of hypnotic, and I would have liked to see them doing more of this kind of digging deeper into atmospheres; the music isn't progressive per se, and there's the risk of being too mild and surpriseless. In general, I don't see much point to recommend KOSMOS to others than Finnish speaking folk hippies. Still, two stars would be too little, so I'm giving three with some reservations.