An evening of psychedelic song-form, spectral near-silence and ravishing, fearless abandon with Finnish songstress Islaja and Japanese guitarist Junzo Suzuki (Overhang Party, Miminokoto) both making return appearances at Cafe OTO.

ISLAJA

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.

Islaja: Pimeyttä kohti from Sami Sänpäkkilä on Vimeo.

Junzo Suzuki is a Japanese guitarist/vocalist perhaps best known for his involvement in the underground psych bands Overhang Party and Miminokoto. His solo music is stripped down form of 'ghost' blues and improvisation that recalls Loren Connors and his fellow countryman Hisato Higuchi.

His second full length CD 'Buried Sky, Spider Torn to Pieces' has just come out on Junzo's own Plunk's Plan label. He also performs with 20 Guilders, Nasca Car, Pouring High Water and Samm Bennett's Ghost Steppers.

"Some of [Suzuki's] convulsive six-string punctuation touches on the ferocious folk-poetry of Kan Mikami but there's also a ton of exquisitely dilated space which Junzo navigates with endless interlocked webs of chiming six-string guitar that's the equal of Christina Carter or Hisato Higuchi. His vocals touch on the more quizzical, breathy style of Keiji Haino and the tracks feel like they plot the vaguest contours of folk-blues logic before piloting deeper into increasingly unanchored explorations of single notes and sudden machine gun retorts isolated in dark, black space." - Volcanic Tongue