JÄTTILÄISROTTA

The music of this Finnish group is very baffling to pproach for the first time. Having read about them as "avant-garde noise" I could simply have a quick listen and go forward. One reason for me to find out what AVARUS is all about is that recently I got quite interested in the solo works of one of the members, Islaja (=Merja Kokkonen). Her vocal music is also pretty strange but definitely not without very unique charm. And now I'm testing whether I may find any kind of charm in this instrumental experimentation stamped as Krautrock here.

First off, I'd like to be informed about the members and their instruments. One can only see a band photo. By the way, what is the cartoon cat Garfield doing in the leaflet, probably without a permission? Damn, I'm starting to sound like a lawman. Apparently I'm having some difficulties right now to concentrate to the music, but I'm finally getting there!

Noise may be too loud word for this. There aren't much of solid structures or melodies to be heard, but the weird playing of whatever unlisted instruments (percussions, guitars and/or other string instruments sounding out of tune, human voices used as instruments, some wind instruments and keyboards too) does build an ambience that is not attacking or disturbing - at least if you're at all familiar with avant-garde popular music. The "normal" playing skill is replaced by totally prejudice-free approach in sonic self-expression. No use wondering if these people would be actually capable of producing normal, well performed music with their instruments or not. They have achieved something that could be thought of as art.

Based on this first listening there are maybe four tracks out of ten on this 33-minute album that rise above nonsense out-of-tune doodling. For your interest, their translations would be roughly: 'Big Medicine Ship', 'Prince Halonen', 'Inter-Sergeant's Inter-Cone' and 'Swan Stone at Not's'. The track titles in general are more amusing and humorous than the music itself, which could be played at an exhibition of difficult, conceptual modern art. 2½ stars rounded down for poor and infoless design.

Avarus were (are?) a Finnish "free-wierd-folk-improv" collective most active between 2001-2010. Jättiläisrotta (Finnish for "giant rat") is their album from 2004 consisting of 10 tracks that seem to be excerpts from longer free-form jams. They mostly feature acoustic instruments (guitar, percussions of various kinds) but there's also keyboards and other more electronic or processed sounds whose origin you can only guess.

I won't go through the album in detail. Some tracks work better than others, as expected. Sometimes they really get into the zone with hypnotic organic pulse and otherworldy ambience, sometimes it's just pointless tuneless noodling. I'd say it's about 50/50 here. Overall there's naïve charm and freedom of expression at play but some of it is just plain silly (yet certainly it's been fun making this).

Fans of early Amon Düül and other more acoustic, jam-oriented and free form Krautrock may well enjoy this. Others probably not so much. Two stars in the end, add one if you're a fan of this kind of stuff.