Ulual Yyy

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ISLAJA - Ulual Yyy

ISLAJA - Ulual Yyy
Fonal
CD // £11.99
FOLK / AMERICANA
Released: Apr 2007
Catalogue Number: FR49CD

Merja Kokkonen is the sort of gal that makes you want to forget it all, buy a nice warm jacket and tip-toe over to the icy land of Finland. She's just got that kind of power, and that's what makes her one of the most important artists in the psychedelic music scene right now. Finnish or not, with "Ulual Yyy" (her third album for the very lovely Fonal label) she sets herself up as not only a poster-girl for one scene or other but also as a respectable artist far removed from the genres she helped forge. By that you probably know what I'm talking about - Finnish forest folk, that genre that kind of bubbled up one morning thanks to some bored journalist or other, and to counter this stereotype Merje has dispensed with anything that might label her folky... or foresty for that matter. The acoustic guitars and jingling bells are gone and are replaced by electric guitar noise, synthesizers, piano and saturated drums - in fact the backings now sound more like warped Velvet Underground out-takes than forest dwelling tree spirits, and we see Merje taking on the troubled spirit of Nico. When you think about it, this is the perfect move forward from 2005's breakthrough album 'Palaa Aurinkoon', an album which not only catapulted Islaja into the limelight, but also the Fonal label - bringing them a far greater audience than they had previously commanded. Shocking in its scope, "Ulual Yyy" feels something like a blackened fairytale as rendered through a haze of hallucinogenic drugs; cyclic percussion and tribal chants forcing their way through detuned shards of electric guitar and fuzzy synthesizer leads while Merje's distinctive voice holds everything together. Residing somewhere in-between the stream-of-consciousness moans of Jandek and the detuned psychedelic atmospheres of Sonic Youth this is exactly the album I needed from Islaja, brimming with deeply poetic songs involving slices of a parallel world - the sort of songs you can lose yourself in, unearthing more and more on every listen. So don't expect to hear any future radio hits, this is an album that demands your full attention, your time and your love, and the more you give it, the more you'll end up taking away with you. A glittering recommendation and without a doubt one of the finest discs you'll hear this year... buy it.