Es, Islaja & Kiila In A Fonal Records Night

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Sun 26 March 2006 // 19:30

(Sun 26th / 7.30pm / £6)

The extraordinary rootless but cocooned 'Finnish Feral' scene is nestled amongst post-industrial Tampere and the coastal cities, Helsinki and Turku. This is a fluid and non-hierarchical group of artists existing by their own rules and influences. Tonight highlights their magic realist tendancies and patchwork pysch-dream music. Obscure, amazing and out there - Fonal Records is the key off-centre of the movement.

Label boss Sami records as Es, whose fragile collages of hypnotic loops, overloaded field recordings and piano truly live up to his name (Es is short for "Experimental Songcycles"). The kind of minimalist compositions that draw your ears to microscopic detail then launch you skyward into dizzying, open-ended vastness.

Islaja is Finnish spirit Merja Kokkonen of Avarus/Kemialliset Ystävät. Her beautifully phased acid-folk blurs layers of harmonium, multitracked vocals, barely-there guitar and hand percussion, evoking the bleak plains of Nico's drone-poems.

Kiila are a loose-knit psychedelic folk ensemble (featuring Es) who deploy low frequency drones, ghostly vocal incantations, derranged percussion and shards of radio interference to mesmeric effect.

FFI: www.qujunktions.com