Esa Kotilainen

Esa Kotilainen’s Ajatuslapsi was a very moderate success at the time of its release in 1977 (on Love Records label, also responsible for the Sperm releases), but over the years its cult status has become immense. Svart Records presents the first ever vinyl reissue, with the mastering and cutting of the lathe supervised by Kotilainen himself.

Ajatuslapsi is quite a magical record. One of the first ambient synthesizer records ever in Finland, it is quite unlike much of the similar stuff produced elsewhere during the seventies. Julian Cope’s Head Heritage website called it “a spinning, wheeling, crying, glowing, pulsating, throbbing, ebbing, flowing piece of electronic wonderment and awe. Without doubt one of the most interesting pieces of mid-to-late seventies minimalist electronic music I’ve ever heard.”

Ajatuslapsi was recorded in 1976, two years before Brian Eno’s Ambient 1. When Kotilainen started to work with the album project, he was very aware of what was happening around him and got influence from many directions. He became acquainted with the avant-garde music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, György Ligeti, Walter Carlos and many others in the early 1970s. A little later he found synthesizer music and the Berlin school. Then came Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Magma, Gong, Terry Riley, Brian Eno, Tonto’s Expanding Head Band, David Vorhaus, Isao Tomita, Pink Floyd and others.

This Kotilainen-approved reissue comes with a new interview with Kotilainen and it expands the psychedelic artwork to gatefold format.