Uton

Limited edition of 500 copies. Straight Edge XXS denotes something of a creative departure for Finnish artist Uton, who abandons scratchy lo-fi drone exercises in favour of conjuring the sounds of India in a series of short pieces that tap into the kinds of instrumentation and rhythms of the subcontinent's various sounds. It's hard to discern what's field recording and what's regular instrumentation on this record: the whole thing sounds like some anonymous archive of alien psychedelia and outsider free jazz. There's a case to be made for this being viewed as a Sublime Frequencies-style release - such is its structure, characterised by snippet-sized portions of exotica - and it certainly strays from the Fonal school of Finnish psych by being so rooted in the language of India's folk music. A departure it may be, yet this latest tangent taken by Uton is no less a joy to the ears than the atmospheric drones we'd become accustomed to.