★Svart Records
Odysseus
Odysseus, Eero Koivistoinen's first proper jazz album, gets its title from the wandering spirit of its songs, traveling from one mood to another. Performed by the Eero Koivistoinen Quintet & Sextet, because Koivistoinen wanted to extend his standard quartet (Koivistoinen-Sarmanto-Laine-Hietanen) to a quintet and invited trumpetist Bertil Lövgren to join. Also Juhani Aaltonen is questing on two tracks. Odysseus is an excellent, youthful package of forward-thinking jazz played by ambitious young j…
Immediate Music III
Olavi Louhivuori Presents "Immediate Music III" - A Boundary-Pushing Musical Triumph with drummers Glenn Kotche and Tony Buck
Think - Tank - Funk
Not funk music but a demanding, innovative piece of chamber music and psychedelic avant-garde jazz, Think-Tank-Funk is an unusually daring album to appear in 1973 in Finland. Half-impossible to find on vinyl, the Svart reissue comes added with a fresh interview with Helasvuo.
Esa Helasvuo, known for his long musical career encompassing choral music, orchestral works, soundtracks and children's music, had years of composing experience under his belt already (he had, for example, written the Vesa-…
Lähtö Matkalle
*2023 stock* "This band has a certain Finnish (and forestral?) nature, like e.g. Pekka Pohjola's music too. The composer is the guitarist Pekka Tegelman (who later wrote and played for singer Liisa Tavi among others, by the way). The sound is rather mellow, besides electric guitar the keyboards are in the key role. Lähtö Matkalle is progressive with longer compositions, the keyboardist had changed and some other new players arrived for this album - another reason for sounding a bit different. If…
Jazz Liisa 14
*200 copies limited edition. 2023 stock* "A great performance by the Nordjazz Quintet -- a cool mixed electric/acoustic combo that features sax and flute from Pekka Poyry, guitar from Nils Petter Nyren, keyboards from Ole Kock Nahsen, bass from Kjell Jansson, and drums from Petur Ostlund -- a combo who work on long tracks that are a nice extrapolation of some of the fusion modes explored by the Love Records label during the same time! The tunes here get especially soulful in the longer stretches…
Vesku Suomesta
*300 copies limited edition. 2023 stock* Actor/singer/flautist Vesa-Matti Loiri's debut album 4+20 was a largely instrumental piece of psychedelic jazz. The follow-up, Vesku Suomesta, from 1972, is more vocal-oriented but no less psychedelic. With guitar hero Hasse Walli, keyboard experimentalist Esa Helasvuo and free jazz guru Edward Vesala in the lineup and with the material consisting of Finnish folk traditionals, the outcome is an oddly captivating and unique set of vocal jazz caught between…