Pekka Pohjola in memoriam (13.1.1952 - 27.11.2008)

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   It was exactly two years ago today at an Uzva gig at the club Kuudes Linja in Helsinki, when the band introduced a track by dedicating it to the memory of Pekka Pohjola. "Memory?!" I exclaimed, and the girl standing next to me informed me that Finland's most legendary bassist had just died that morning. To honor the anniversary of the passing of the four string master, I'll take a look at his solo career, as he was in addition to his skills on the low end instrument (which attracted the attention of Frank Zappa to the degree that he asked Pohjola to join his band at one point) a respected composer and band leader, whose career in the forefront of Finnish art rock spread over four decades.

I admit my attempts haven't been that numerous, but I've never gotten a good grip of Wigwam, the band which brought Pohjola his first bit of true recognition. But the solo career starting with 1972's Pihkasilmä Kaarnakorva is very close to my heart. The debut is clearly an effort by Pohjola the bassist, an example of which is the wild bass solo jam lasting for minutes in the track Metsonpeliä. But the soon-to-be-familiar compositional style merging prog, jazz and classical is already evident on this debut album. On the following works Pohjola the composer takes the lead, but there's still plenty of instrumental acrobatics to be heard. The second album, Harakka Bialoipokku (B the Magpie) fantastically utilizes instrumental music to tell a story, which is included in textual form as well. It was a great surprise to learn, that the music and the text were actually developed by two different people completely separately, so the perfect match is a complete coinsidence. Harakka is perhaps my favourite Pohjola album along with the fourth, Visitation. Guitars usually had a very limited role in Pohjola's music during this era, the exception being the third album Keesojen Lehto (Mathematician's Air Display), which has a strong input from Mike Oldfield, under whose name the album was mistakenly put in some editions even though the vision and the compositions were all pure Pohjola.

The synth craze that swept over the music world in the 80s causes its share of damage to the Pohjola output as well. After the relatively free-form jam oriented Kätkävaaran Lohikäärme starting the decade, all of the eighties albums, Urban Tango, Jokamies/Everyman, Space Waltz and Flight of the Angel are plagued by the somewhat plastic sounds in the synth and sometimes drum department. But they contain a good number of excellent compositions, like for example the Space Waltz title track and Urban Tango's New Impressionist. The latter album also contains an unfortunate deviation into the field of vocalized music, very much ruined by the testosterone filled booming of the singer Kassu Halonen. Jokamies/Everyman was a soundtrack to a TV program of the same name, and the synth landscapes and electronic drums don't appeal to me very much without the accompanying pictures; my least favourite Pohjola album. In the 80s Pohjola's melodies got a good deal of new grandiose heaviness to contradict the more dexterous runs of previous years, and wind instruments gave the limelight to a more traditional band sound with keys and guitars. While the 70s output is perhaps closest to my analogue prog heart, this era gets a nice amount of spins in my player as well.

Six years after Flight of the Angel, after composing big band material and his first symphony, Pohjola returned to band action with Changing Waters, the title track of which was originally released on Space Waltz. In the early 90s most of the previous decade's sound flaws were swept away, and the album is a more comfortable listen than some of its predecessors, even though the compositional material may fall a bit behind, despite the brilliant Benjamin opening and closing the album. Pewit and Views at the turn of the century brought the solo career to a handsome close, both featuring some of his finest tracks. In addition to the compositions Pewit shines especially in the sound department, the changes in dynamics are brilliant and the drums, recorded in a stone walled corridor of the studio, are massive at times and punchy always. Views contains one of the biggest contrasts between two adjacent pieces of music, when the opening track Waves, a stunningly beautiful composition for a small ensemble of strings, winds and harp changes to The Red Porche, which has Pohjola at his most humorous and funkiest. It actually might be for me the only really enjoyable vocal track of his entire career.

In addition to his solo career and the albums made with Wigwam, Pohjola appeared in many other projects as well, for example The Group, Made in Sweden and Unisono, leaving an immensely rich musical legacy. Tonight I'll raise my can of sauna beer to him.