Taipuva Luotisuora - IV
(Kaakao Records 017)
Taipuva Luotisuora - IV
(Kaakao Records 017)
From Aural Innovations October 2009 update
This is the Turku, Finland bands fourth real release and it follows in the footsteps of what they have made in the past but is perhaps more melodic and clean in its sound and a little more advanced in the layers of keyboards. The digipack is very beautiful with a nice glued in booklet with very nice pictures of the
band and some cool artwork as well and some details about the record and songs. The CD contains 9 tracks and runs about 47 minutes long. The opening track is very cool and one of the more spacey and heavy on the CD. It has a lot of great dynamics and spacey synths. The Army of Isopods is five minutes and very features some sung vocals by violinist Tero. Half way through the track the band kick into a very cool part, which might remind some people of Ozric Tentacles? Capricious Bonfire slows things down with some nice bass playing to compliment the acoustic guitars and nice lead synthesizers. There is a fantastic sound production on this track. When the track picks up it has a cool groove. Very dynamic stuff. Ilman rihlan kiertämää features the violin in several parts and is another quite dynamic track, which 3 minutes into changes completely and some great spacey synths and more uptempo guitar is played. Muting Glow is a quite short track and features the Kantele played by Esko. Cool instrument and it adds a really unique element to the sound. Imaginary Blizzard was composed by the drummer Taneli and features one of the few guitar solos. A very melodic almost floating track, despite it’s uptempo pace. Track 7 (long Finnish name) is one that the band really played awesomely live in the concerts and is one of the more heavy and psychedelic tracks, with some guitar soloing, and nice layers of synths. Hopeful Sprout, again features some acoustic guitars and a sort of dark mysterious start. Then the piano kicks in this changes the balance of the mood of the music and leads to a section that sweeps the dark feelings into the abyss. The long Kurki ends the CD. It starts off quite psychedelic before taking off. It has a very cool percussive middle section before leaping in another direction. What cool synths sounds before the melodic, what should I say, trademark of this record returns, which we have heard on several tracks. Cool stuff. Finally I think it is very cool that many of the different musicians contribute to the individual writing of tracks. They all show their unique compositional skills. Another impressive record.
Visit the band web site at: http://www.luotisuora.net
Visit the record label site at: http://www.kaakao.fi
Reviewed by Scott Heller