UNTITLED

Here's a band with 26 titles in their output and zero ratings/reviews! I have to admit, their music is very difficult to get into. In fact, it may even be difficult to hear it as music at all. I have only listened to three albums with weak patience. But now I'll try to get a bit deeper into this one.

This Finnish experimental music group whose name means Chemical Friends is led by Jan Anderzén. Also his other band TOMUTONTTU is included in the Archives if I remember right (I haven't listened to them). I found a little essay titled "Music of Light" in the disc bag, written by Ralf Normaali which must be a made-up name. Some citations from it:

"Call him a Visionary, call him a Searcher, call Jan Anderzén a True Artist, who uses his craftsmanship and wisdom to sing songs of praise for the Higher Being, recreating the structural integrity and harmony of the Universe, both visible and invisible. The album you're holding in your hand is the Peak, the Strongest Testament (...). [Then follows a couple of stories about God's helping hand, and Anderzén tells of passing years, his alienation and reaching a mental bottom.] "And just as gradual as was my way from a human being to vermin, as sudden was my way back and beyond human and beyond being as well. (...) It's all in this music, too. It's massive, but I must warn you, it's not for all of you, it is ripping it is scorching. Sunlight is the most common of all demons and I've let it inside."

I don't know how seriously those bold words should be taken, ie. how much they have biographical truth or how much the essay is just over-the-top surreal companion to the music. Whatever, it does help one to increase his/her patience towards the music, which, despite its ultimate strangeness, may be done as sincere self-expression. The track titles are in Finnish but I translate some of them here.

'They came form the distances of Heaven': a chaos of short electronic-sounding noises from which some human voices and various instruments can be spotted. A wilder cousin to the freakiest sonic experiments of Ummagumma-era Pink Floyd. 'Flying wolves' has more of all kinds of percussion. Totally stoned tribal music? In the end there's a mumbling, distorted voice saying something. The fourth track is slightly more relaxed and acoustically oriented, again with an Ethnic flavour in the freaky soundscape. 'Cellular pulse' (?) comes closer to early kosmische Musik even though it's thick, not spacey. And so on. By the way, none of the used instruments is named. A pity, it would have been interesting information!

The first impression is probably just chaotic, hard to tell the individual tracks from each other, but in the end each one is clearly different, even if they're basically various combinations of similar ingredients (electronic, acoustic, percussive, sampled noises, the varying amount of rhythmic element). First of all, forget melodies, harmony and other common features of music. As it was said, it's not for all of you. Certainly not! Play this on your date if you want to see the fastest exit ever.

I hope I succeeded in giving you a useful picture of this music. The rating is a tough question. In the genre of totally freaky experimental music (surely not my cup of tea) this is actually quite... interesting. And since this album really seemed to be the best of the three, I can stretch to three encouraging stars.