STARLIGHT ORIGIN

Uttu is an obscure Finnish artist with no reviews yet here at all. This is Uttu's only album, but there's surprisingly also a DVD release listed. To my ears Uttu doesn't exactly sound like a person's actual name, but the artist bio reveals the full name to be Uttu Aavas, which however is not mentioned anywhere on this release. So, it's a one-man band. Apart from two ladies credited for vocals, Uttu plays everything by himself.

The album is basically instrumental despite some wordless vocals and spoken parts. My closest reference would be GANDALF, the Austrian one-man act. The music operates somewhere between ambient and New Age with slight World flavours, most notably in the dreamy 12-minute opening piece 'Seeds of Knowledge' due to flutes in it. It also makes me think of Mike Oldfield's most NewAgey stuff (e.g. Voyager, Light + Shade...). For the spacey approach and some guitar or synth parts you might also think of Floydian diamonds shining or the 80's/90's Tangerine Dream stuff with some female voices.

The rest of the album continues in the similar direction but does so in a good way, resulting as a coherent, harmonic and slightly other-worldly, imagination- provoking musical voyage. For a listener without any interest towards New Age this probably is a boring listen though. Much of the album could be labelled as Electronic Music, comparable to the second generation German artists such as Software or Deuter. The -IC- (Innovative Communication) label used to release a lot of various artists compilations in the 90's, and Uttu's shorter pieces such as 'Hycelium' or 'Essence' would fit in quite well.

The final piece 'Sunday Dreamin'' contains the most notable spoken parts (talking about cozy and lazy sunday life) attached to the dreamy instrumental music, and frankly they bring the music a bit down from the euphoric heights. I'd prefer it without Uttu's voice.

I didn't expect much -- the used cd I bought cheaply had been unsold since 2015 -- but I am positively surprised by the high level of production. How come this artist has remained so obscure? Where is he now? 3,5 stars actually!

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