Hindsight hinders Pohjonen’s debut. It inevitably sounds like a test record where Kimmo - quiting the folk scene (though not necessarily its roots) to unleash the primal voices in his head, with a mutant accordion by his side - is trying out techniques and stylistics that would become his bewildering trademark, but which hadn’t yet morphed into a fully formed, coherent musical idiom, as there is nothing to be found here that Pohjonen didn’t do better later. You can appreciate where his music was going, but you can also frustratingly hear that it hadn’t gotten there yet - and, in it, you also get a bonus sneak preview of some of the questionable choices (like those proto-techno beats) he would devolve into after his streak of most original and uncompromising albums; so, pretty much a time-travelling worst of both worlds. Once you’ve trodden the unique and exhilarating soundscapes he would shortly open up, it’s hard to enjoy this initial effort for what it was at its time; your audition is caught up in a temporal limbo in which this record has no present; it’s being constantly projected onto a musical future it relates to but cannot match.
No comments:
Post a Comment