Now in its second year, the Barbican’s Transcender series of performancesoffers a look at transcendental, devotional, spiritual and sacred music. The focus is on music designed to transport the listener, to conjure trances or summon states of ecstasy. Placing artists in the right context is key with Transcender and for this night of electronic music influenced by the shamanic traditions of Northern Europe, the Barbican has chosen Café Oto.
Islaja is the recording alias of Merja Kokkonen, a musician and visual artist from Helsinki, currently based in Berlin. Her music is born from experimentation, uniting traditional Finnish forest mystery and a radical song universe. Islaja’s spectral sound suggests pathways to other worlds, with echoes of religious chants underpinned by steady percussion, and fluid vocals melding with drones. A regular contributor to the more psych/folk and improv oriented Kemialliset Ystävät and Avarus, Islaja’s recordings are by contrast almost entirely self-contained, reflecting the more personal nature of her music, and a natural affinity towards an independent/DIY aesthetic. Her fourth album for Fonal (following 2008’s excursion on Ecstatic Peace for the live document Blaze Mountain Recordings), Keraaminen Pää (or Ceramic Head) contains many shades of black. It also bears witness to a shift in perception and execution; yet the thread that weaves its way through all Islaja’s work remains resolute, visible and intact.
If Islaja’s previous albums for Fonal appear to exhibit a more overtly pastoral nature, this in part feels coincidental, or secondary to something much larger and more difficult to define. From the earliest Islaja recordings, Merja has made the simplest of instrumentation work to her own ends, displaying a disquieting combination of innocence and fearlessness, and a seemingly innate ability to transcend the confines of a genre. It is the same singular approach and vision that informs Keraaminen Pää – born largely of whatever instruments were to hand, if the sound has shifted into more electronic terrain, it remains as immersive and subtly evocative as ever.
Keraaminen Pää is out on Fonal records in September.
The Family Elan
The Family Elan’s Chris Hladowski (also of Scatter and The One Ensemble), takes inspiration not just from different musical forms, but from the history of those musical forms; excavating and re-presenting buried Azerbaijani music of the 15th and 16th centuries, Rebitiko sounds of early 20th century Greece, and UK psych-folk of the 1960s.
“Chris Hladowski’s preoccupation with the folk music of Asia Minor is a direct descendent of Incredible String Band’s pioneering 1960s work incorporating non-Western instruments and influences into traditional European folk and Early Music…all given a psychedelic tweak and delivered with a clear-eyed instrumental virtuosity that sets it apart from most free folk” The Wire
"Rapturous experimental folk, tinged with East European promise.” Uncut
