Led by Jan Anderzen, Kemialliset Ystävät are the most visible of Finland’s sub-operatives and the most consistently rewarding. They work in short, spooling instrumentals, building layers of simple repetitive riffs into laminal mudcakes and weaving ghosts of folk song into huge tunnels of drone. Alkuhärkä is their latest Fonal release, another entry in an already barely-quantifiable back catalogue. This one sees their sound slightly rewired in a bid to further bolster the electronic element, with several tracks evoking the cracked neon skies of David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy as well as the early synth experiments of Asmus Tietchens. But overall the sound is acoustic and communal, albeit occasionally propelled by the kind of tranced rock base that launched previous Scandinavian sound thinkers like International Harvester and Träd Gräs och Stenar straight into space. 18 tracks flit past like landscapes glimpsed from a train: marching band melodies scored for duck calls and bells, huge fields of teleporting percussion, accordion-led music box refrains and heartbreaking almost-songs carried on tides of wordless vocals. Recommended. Limited to 500 copies on 220g vinyl.

New album from the duo of Jan Anderzen (Kemialliset Ystavat) and Jani Hirvonen (Uton) with a heady Godz/ESP freak division feel. Lots of chanting, percussion, woozy use of F/X, Angus MacLise worship…

Fabulous, ass-blasting free jazz set from a buncha Fins with connections to Hetero Skeleton – alto and baritone saxophonist Janne Martinkauppi, alto and tenor saxophonist Sami Pekkola and drummer Petri Pirtila – bolstered by percussionist Jaakko Tolvi from Kemialliset Ystavat and tenor saxophonist Taneli Tuominen of Boris Morgana. The recording has a classic wild-man free jazz feel, with reed-shredding solos of the calibre of Peter Brotzmann and Arthur Doyle cut up with a massively aggressive post-FMP edge and an attack that would reconcile Globe Unity Orchestra with Rauhan Orkesteri. Edition of 300 copies and highly recommended.

OOP 2004 release, limited to 400 copies, from this Finnish behemoth featuring Islaja.

Massive limited edition LP on NNCK’s imprint documenting a series of recordings from this ambitious American/European big band that unites Dave Nuss of The No-Neck Blues Band with Spencer Clark and James Ferraro of The Skaters alongside Jan Anderzen of Kemialliset Ystavat, Jonna from Kuupuu, Stellar Om Source, Mik Quantius from Embryo and Tiitus Petajaniemi and Jari Koho of Uton/Keijo. The whole entourage toured through Europe in the spring of 2007 and this LP collects the best of the jams. Three long tracks and one fragment, including two pieces recorded at VPRO Radio. The sound takes off from the kind of free goof blueprint of The Godz, with a lots of percussion and odd rhythmic dunting while The Skaters work lush keyboard parts and a wall of ululating vocal drone deep into the backdrop. Quantius supplies vocals that are somewhere between Don Van Vliet and Alan Bishop and the whole thing proceeds into this kind of weird ethno-zone where fragmented world rhythms and sounds are twisted to dark, psychotropic ends. But the real gravy is the side long fourth track, the most convincing update of the monochord bass/drum confusion of Skip Spence’s “Grey/Afro” ever improvised in real time, combining sublime vocal highs with a hypnotic bottom end. Highly recommended.

Two new tracks of post-Godz aural confusion and homemade psych from these Finnish nuts that sometimes feature Chris Corsano. On Jan Anderzen of Kemialliset Ystavat’s label. “Two tracks by the Puke Eaters, the A side was originally conceived as a theme for an album dealing with Deihoma, the man who wandered inside "the Worm that ate the world" in order to slay it. Strictly Steen & Rusty, as inept as ever. B side has Rusty involved in the act of synthesizer desecration with some nameless slave. Steen Guru vocals were added later via the method of overdubbing.” - Ralf Normaali

New limited 7” on Jan Anderzen of Kemialliset Ystavat’s own label from this solo female. Tsembla use traditional acoustic and electric instrumentation to create oddly affecting folk/pop miniatures that combine the scrabbly forest-folk sound of Kuupuu, Lau Nau etc with nostalgic keyboards and variously displaced sonics.

Great new album from Jan Anderzen’s Chemical Friends, three years in the making, with a freeform freakout style that could almost be The Familiar Ugly on The Red Krayola’s Parable Of Arable Land. There’s also a newfound ‘song’ quality to many of the tracks, with snatches of melody and hints of vocal arcs that float like Popol Vuh choirs above the flashing electronics, hand-drums and toytown tropicalia. Aspects of Astral Social Club and Monopoly Child Star Searchers combine in weird childlike hymns that could almost pass for a Japanese Ya Ho Wha soundtracking a Hawaiian beach monster movie. Nostalgic, funny, uniquely compelling, with guest appearances from a bunch of key underground players including C. Spencer Yeh, Neil Campbell, Hitoshi Kojo, Pekko Kappi and Niko-Matti Ahti.

Great new album from Jan Anderzen’s Chemical Friends, three years in the making, with a freeform freakout style that could almost be The Familiar Ugly on The Red Krayola’s Parable Of Arable Land. There’s also a newfound ‘song’ quality to many of the tracks, with snatches of melody and hints of vocal arcs that float like Popol Vuh choirs above the flashing electronics, hand-drums and toytown tropicalia. Aspects of Astral Social Club and Monopoly Child Star Searchers combine in weird childlike hymns that could almost pass for a Japanese Ya Ho Wha soundtracking a Hawaiian beach monster movie. Nostalgic, funny, uniquely compelling, with guest appearances from a bunch of key underground players including C. Spencer Yeh, Neil Campbell, Hitoshi Kojo, Pekko Kappi and Niko-Matti Ahti.

New release on Campbell Kneale’s private Don’t Fuck With magic imprint in an edition of only 100 copies: dreamteam collaboration that pits Campbell Kneale’s current vehicle for maximal transmigratory bliss with Jan Anderzen’s Kemialliset Ystavat satellite Tomutonttu. This side is totally spooked, starting off in a weird whispering grass/forest of spirits style that’s somewhere between the great Paivansade LP on Eclipse and the early Keiji Haino compositions on the Soul’s True Love before breaking into a back-and-forth ghost fog-horn exchange that could almost be the titanic specters of Don Dietrich and Jim Sauter straddling the Golden Gate Bridge. This plays out as one long track though it does consist of several separate conceptions and the later pieces mutate into a kind of alien cosmo drone that combines Anderzen’s goofily psychedelic keyboard work with sobbing arcs of choral rainbows, expertly channeled tape work and the sound of punctured speakers broadcasting from Venus. This is hip! Full colour wallets. 

Edition of 300 copies picture disc with art on the flip presenting one of Jan Anderzen’s most psychedelic and hypnotically rocking sides. This self-titled collection, originally commissioned by the Aanen Lumo Festival for New Sounds, starts off like an early Sonic Boom side with fast tremolo guitar and padding motorik rhythms beneath hysterically modulated and extended vocals eventually locking-down into a fantastic eternal groove. But soon the whole thing devolves into what sounds like a chopped and screwed Arkestra tackling “The Satellites Are Spinning”. Obsessively constructed psychedelic electronica, set to stun. Recommended. 

Inspired pairing that pitches a side each from Neil Campbell’s kinetic Industrial trance unit Astral Social Club with Jan Anderzen of Kemialliset Ystavat’s hypnotic toy orchestra Tomutonttu. Campbell’s side has a heavy automating/Nurse With Wound feel to it with Steel Dream Of The Marching men rhythms dissolving in corrosive F/X that feedback all over themselves to the point that it feels like Terry Riley remixing Neu w/an eternal Acid motorik sound. Anderzen’s side is the perfect compliment, extended fluttering drones over helium melodies that feel as if they could have been beamed from the most candy floss areas of James Ferraro’s brain. Edition of 300 copies w/150g colour vinyl, hand-stamped labels and full colour silkscreen sleeves by Alan Sherry of SIWA. 

Edition of 60 copies self-released live album from Finnish communal heads Uton. This one features two complete live shows, from Copenhagen and Berlin in 2008. The sound is wilder and little more pro-Industrial than recent Uton white-outs, with monolithic machine noise, infernal drones and the vibrations of distant factories charging the air with forms and shadows somewhere between Throbbing Gristle and the original Dream Syndicate.

Edition of 60 copies self-released album from Finnish cosmonauts Uton. This one combines distant music box/ethnic melodies with sandpaper coarse shortwave tones, bursts of analogue electricity and some almost Takayanagi-esque feedback/noise constructs.

Edition of 60 copies self-released album from this Finnish ethnic psych/jam outfit. Five tracks that move from screaming automatic-music Fluxus-style instants to protesting post-Conrad/Cale violin noise and psychoactive small instrument trance.

New release for Jani Hirvonen’s one-man Finnish cosmonaut orchestra, a Japan-only release on Sachiko Fukuoka’s (Kousokuya/Overhang Party/Vava Katora) own label. This is one of Uton’s more enigmatic releases, with the sound of nowhere channelled via automating electronics and hovering planetary-scale drones over endless whispering forests of microtonal choirs. Comes in oversize hard card sleeves: “Uton’s music is a mix of many genres, including elements from drone, avant-noise, free-improv, psychedelia, ambient, tape-music, musique concrete etc. Sometimes wondering in the silent dark semi-acoustic mysteries, and in the next day creating noisy wall of sound with outer space echoes and alien atmospheres. Uton's sound is made from many sources; like electric guitar, electronics, voice, different type of percussions (small drums, maracasses), bells, violin, flutes, keyboards... and nowadays also some digital manipulation too. All kind of instruments are welcome to join in, but the result is always coming from the same filter (which we call now with name "Uton")
From The Twilight, Next to Nowhere and Disappeared album was recorded already around 2004-2005 in Tampere, Finland. Recorded with four-track tape recorder, and later edited and mastered digitally on computer. Musically this album shows the most mysterious and atmospheric side of Uton. He has collaborated with Alan Courtis (Reynols), Antony Milton (Mrtyu, Black Boned Angel), Ben Reynolds, Peter Wright, Jari Koho (Vapaa), Maxime Primault (Enfer Boreal, High Wolf) and Jan Anderzen (Tomutonttu, Kemialliset Ystavat) among others.” – MA.