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We are proud to announce the release of RAUHAN
ORKESTERI / LAUHKEAT LAMPAAT CD originally released on LP in 2005 on Italian
label,
QBICO; ten pieces of free-improv-folk-jazz from Finland, with a
distinctive foundation of playful vigor and heartening spirit. It’s an
organic improv session that breathes countryside air, sensing the grass
between its toes.
Rauhan Orkestri (Peace Orchestra) has to be one of Europe’s most exciting
new free jazz outfits, filled with a rarely encountered joyful energy
floating on a fantastic search into the free realms of the outer
possibilities of sound. No cause for intellectual drama here, Antti Tolvi,
Ville Jolanki (reeds), Jaakko Tolvi (percussion) and Tero Kemppainen (bass)
need no more then the direct physical contact between body and instrument
for their sonic onslaughts that in no time go from hectic outbursts to warm
and mellow soft blows.
LP on
QBICO
"Two parts Finland to one part Canada, seven parts Rauhan Orkesteri to
three parts Lauhkeat Lampaat, there’s a lot of hands in Sylissain Oot; only
fitting considering what a glorious, sprawling, playful confusion of an
album it is. The two Finnish groups at work present quite different and
idiosyncratic takes on improvised music. Rauhan Orkesteri have put a
percussive, bass-heavy slant on the type of busy, mile-a-minute clatter
rooted in albums like Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz, whereas Lauhkeat Lampaat
take a more relaxed approach to their aural stew, letting it simmer slowly
rather than bubbling over violently like their counterparts. Both groups,
however, sound like they’re having a hell of a time making the racket
recorded here...The best Orkesteri tracks, “Juhlapitko” and “Villa Rusetilla”,
are raucous and reckless in their boundless energy, with driving double
bass, woodwinds honking and squawking like frightened waterfowl, clattering
percussion and some vocal hoots and grunts. Lauhkeat’s “Bile-Kalkkuna” is a
favourite, using bells and flutes to coax a more slow-burning and drawn-out
sound that serves as a nice counterpoint to Rauhan’s antics... this is a
fantastic split. Nice to see Ache keeping people on their toes, always
branching out into new realms of weirdness."
Beatroute
"Hailing from Finland, Rauhan Orkessteri are
purveyors of a manic brand of Free Jazz, which runs the gamut from carefully
delicate and sparse to frantic and self-destructive. Conceptually their
compositions stick like glue to the prevalent and modern day practice of
Free Jazz in which no compositional or predetermined structure is imposed on
the player's improvisation. Often eluding any semblance of rhythmic
structure or melody, manic bass lines plod, skip and gallop while mingling
with saxophone squawks, wails and squeaks. Occasionally other horns as well
as some flutes enter the fray along with consistent junkyard percussion. The
players chase their own tails as they run circles around each other at
varied speeds, leaving Rauhan Orkessteri to resemble a wagon with four
wheels of distinctly different sizes. The tracks that comprise Sylissain Oot,
fall into the lineage of much music of it's kind as they seek to convey the
exchange of energies between players instead of putting forth a melody or
rhythm, which one can hum or dance to. This leaves their music to act as an
aural diagram of energy exchange, a tangled web of flow chart lines, the
musical version of a Jackson Pollock.
Rauhan Orkessteri's boundless, frenzied and manic energy is broken up within
the tracking of the album by interspersed compositions contributed by their
offshoot band Lauhkeat Lampaat. Lauhkeat Lampaat's sound, while arguable
still drawing from the free jazz lineage, is much more sparse and akin to
forest dwelling Finnish psych bands such as Kemialstat Ystävät. Trickling
tinkered percussion, bells and other small instruments combined to create
tracks, which offer the listener a moment of repose, after the fury that
Rauhan Orkessteri can unfurl.
Sylissain Oot is a wonderful journey delving further down into the Finnish
underground. Rauhan Orkessteri /Lauhkeat Lampaat have combine to create an
album that doesn't function as a split release but rather as a
collaboration, with each group conveying very different sounds stemming from
the same ideology. A beautiful tapestry is created through strands of
different color, texture and material, showcasing Kinetic, Potential and
Entropic energies. Free Jazz is as dead as it is alive, Rauhan Orkessteri /Lauhkeat
Lampaat have robbed the graves of the greats, to create a spirit of their
own, and the ghosts are smiling and nodding in approval."
- Indieworkshop
"Free forest jazz from Finland, Rauhan Orkestei and
their sub-group, Lauhkeat Lampaat, combine the playful joi de vivre of
Rahsaan Roland Kirk with brief bursts of screeing free improv and prolonged,
utterly delightful minimal forest folk meanderings to magical effect.
Having never been to Finland I can't be certain that all the amazing forest
folk coming out of that country is actually being made by humans and not
little magical creatures, and the Rauhan Orkesteri could easily be the
musical playtime of a cheery group of elves, gnomes and wood sprites.
Sylissain oot sounds like green fields smell, earthy forest floors,
moss and coniferous.
The album starts with a dense, chaotic squall of horns on fire that, in
dialectic with the remainder of the record, seems to illustrate the
progression of free improvisation from its urban jazz origins to the present
diaspora. The Orkesteri quickly settles down to gently wandering forest
freedom on the second track and stays there – no complaints here – until the
seventh track where another ungodly and unabashedly fun racket ensues to
wake listeners from their woodland reveries.
Track 8 sees the first vocals distinctly nameable as such – throughout the
album there are voices heard through horns in the style of Rahsaan and other
latter-day jazz artists – but it's on track eight that band members actually
yelp enthusiastically and it serves to illuminate how much fun they're
having – it's infectious.
Rauhan Orkesteri will have instant and lasting appeal with both fans of free
jazz and forest folk. In terms of pure fun this album outshines anything
I've heard coming out of the Finnish free-folk scene. I'm no expert on the
matter – but I've given casual listens to many albums and serious listens to
a few albums and Sylissain oot is definitely one of the great
ones!" - Lefthip.com
"Rauhan Orkesteri’s roots lie deep in Finnish soil and their music is
possessed of a ragged folk spirit, while also drawing sustenance from early
American fire music and the kind of imaginary vibratory spaces pioneered by
European ensembles such as Globe Unity Orchestra and The Spontaneous Music
Ensemble." - Sunday Herald
""Rauhan Orkesteri's recent single on the Finnish POK label may be the
greatest seven inches of gut-wrenching avant jazz intensity since
Borbetomagus's brain-erasig Coelacanth back in 1993. This album - their
second vinyl LP to date - continues in the loose, high-energy vein of the
single with a clutch of instantly composed high-register hymnals and frayed
bottom end blues. The first track here matches the legendary Center of the
World group led by Frank Wright in terms of visceral tone-bending assault,
with detonating Sunny Murray-style percussion working folk tattoos into
muddy whorls of sophisticated grunt. Also scattered throughout the LP are
duo tracks by Rauhan offshot Lauhkeat Lampaat that map a goofier arc than
the mothership by combining hand percussion and assorted small instruments
in miniature freakouts that sound somewhere between The Mothers of
Invention, Han Bennink's solo work and The Godz."
- Wire
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