UTON

Sun Araw

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:59:37 -0700

live @ "upset the rhythm" Luminaire, London 6 / 2009

Pocahaunted

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:14:30 -0700

live in "upset the rhythm" luminaire, london 6/2009

rough piece (9.4.2009)

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 07:00:12 -0700

recorded live with sony DSC-P73 video recorder, 9.4.2009 in Finland,
using electric guitar, bow, effects, mixer. it's a "rough piece",
rehearsal tape, part 1 (more coming later, keep eyes and ears open)

oslo 23.8.2008

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:08:24 -0800

new year tune in tune out

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 14:59:52 -0800

(15.11.07 ) 17

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 07:02:02 -0800

(11.11.07) 15

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 06:59:18 -0800

(03.11.07) 5

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 06:56:38 -0800

logo

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 06:43:34 -0800

sunny

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 06:43:20 -0800

skyline

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 06:37:29 -0800

reviews of albums

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 06:40:10 -0800

Uton "Solar Spells" cdr (Om Ha Sva Ha Ksha Ma La Recordings 2008) "This one combines distant music box/ethnic melodies with sandpaper coarse shortwave tones, bursts of analogue electricity and some almost Takayanagi-esque feedback/noise constructs." - Volcanic Tongue "Dense electric squalls, squealing tape loop compositions and spooked-out collages." - Boa Melody Bar

Uton "Tales From The Ancient Fire" cdr (Om Ha Sva Ha Ksha Ma La Recordings 2008) "This one features two complete live shows, from Copenhagen and Berlin in 2008. The sound is wilder and little more pro-Industrial than recent Uton white-outs, with monolithic machine noise, infernal drones and the vibrations of distant factories charging the air with forms and shadows somewhere between Throbbing Gristle and the original Dream Syndicate." - Volcanic Tongue "Two live recordings, one from Copenhagen 2008 and the other Berlin, also 2008. Uton's smog and smolder at its most electric. Nice hand-made packaging." - Boa Melody Bar

Uton "Holy Burn" cdr (Om Ha Sva Ha Ksha Ma La Recordings 2008) "Edition of 60 copies self-released album from this Finnish ethnic psych/jam outfit. Five tracks that move from screaming automatic-music Fluxus-style instants to protesting post-Conrad/Cale violin noise and psychoactive small instrument trance." - Volcanic Tongue "Recorded in 2008 in Finland using electric guitar, violin and electronics. Uton on very fine form with acid hillbilly violin, dense walls of feedback and damaged electronic chatter." - Boa Melody Bar

Uton "Attack of the Aether Sun" cs (Housecraft 2008)

"Another excellent Uton release. Side A is mostly electronics-based to begin with, exuding a poisonous cloud of drone & hum. Flute and plucked piano strings join forces later for a spooked ritual. On side B Henry Flynt-esque violin squalls away under an ear-shredding wall of high end feedback." - Boa Melody Bar

Uton "We're Only In It for the Spirit" CD (Digitalis 2008)

""We're Only in it for the Spirit" continues to trek through new worlds of sound, polishing off the once-rough edges of Uton's sound into something that acts as a beacon in the void. Dark, brooding drones for guitar and electronics flicker and fade like a distant, stellar horizon. Hirvonen is a master craftsman, and Koho is his perfect foil. The two play off each other's every move and produce an end result that rivals anything Uton has released previously. "We're Only in it for the Spirit" is a magickal piece of work." - Digitalis Uton & Valerio Cosi - KÄÄRMEENKÄÄNTÖPIIRI cd (Fire Museum, 2007) "Perhaps this collaboration was destined to happen, and we're overjoyed that it is happening here! Tampere, Finland's Uton (Jani Hirvonen) and Taranto, Italy's Valerio Cosi (who is ½ of Pulga after all) are two of the most creative and most prolific musicians working in experimental music at the moment, and on Käärmeenkääntopiiri, Uton and Valerio have mastered a sound that combines elements of psychedelia, free jazz, krautrock, environmental sounds, drones and more for an ecstatic listening experience. A mélange of electronic and acoustic instrumentation, sounds here collide and join together as naturally as the coming of the tides. By turns meditative and forceful, introspective and extroverted, all the while commanding undivided attention from the listener. This is experimentation that remains inviting even in its darker passages. 2007 has been a banner year for both of these musicians, and this release finds them in top form, creating a work that shows exactly why they are in such high demand. Käärmeenkääntopiiri will leave you hoping this is the beginning of many more collaborations between these two" - Fire Museum "Long-distance duo collaborations seem to be the flavor of the day in the Italian underground. This time we find Italy's Valerio Cosi teaming up with Jani Hirvonen in musical circles best know as Uton. Käärmeenkääntöpiiri is a gloriously soft-spoken soundbath installation based around all things droning, but this is so much more than just another timeless drone so don't let that scare you away. Exploratory and glacial, but ever-changing, soundscapes constructed from guitars, saxophone, electronics, organs, effects, strings, field recordings, percussion and all sorts of noises move like dark cosmic clouds across a dense galactic plane. It's strange that these sounds somehow make me think both of some cosmic whirlpool and the unconditional love of a hidden valley. I guess what I am trying to say is that this disc manages to stand with both feet on the leaf covered forest floors but also aim for the stars. Blend all this with elements of psychedelia and distant traces of free jazz and you get yourself a release that touches deeper than most recordings ever will" - Mats Gustafsson / Broken Face "If you are looking for a soundtrack to meditate to, and then to help you return to the temporal plane with a burst of renewed frenzy, here ya go. Experimental music veterans Jani Hirovnen (Uton) and Valerio Cosi have collaborated here on a grand scale. "Kaarmeenkaantopiiri" is a humble but at times majestic and noisy affair, that incorporates found sounds and minimal drone with psych and krautrock hubris. The centerpiece of the record is the fifteen minute opener, "Silmaympyrakolmio," which introduces many of the themes to be explored, and then explores them with the most passion to be found on the four song set. Yet "Hetken Aika (Kolmessa Maailmassa)", "Kiertoilmakristalli," and the final track, another fifteen plus epic, "Yhdentekeva," hold their own and deepen the colors assembled on the palate by the first tune. What does it all mean? "Kaarmeenkaantopiiri" is a powerful release, and like most of life, the fact that the road map here is presented in incomprehensible words--at least for Western adepts-does not detract from the mood that urges one on to higher planes. Uton and Cosi bring a bag of magic tricks to these improvs and drones, and we are wise for digging in and giving them some of our space. 7/10" - Mike Wood / Foxy Digitalis AMEBA ILLUSIONS - cdr (American Grizzly, 2007) "New seven track album from this European avant/trance unit with the kind of weirdly synthesized melody lines and dunting micro-percussion that might make you think of the whole Cluster/Harmonia family given a more mind-phasing, occult make-over. Totally eerie and the perfect late night soundtrack." - Volcanic Tongue BACKGROUD MUSIC FOR SILENCE - cdr (RuralFaune, 2006) "Latest missive from these Finnish forest freaks, who continue to churn out, utterly mesmerizing otherworldly murk, every record as weird and wonderful as the last. Background For Silence is two tracks, nearly fifty minutes, of Uton at their most subtle and understated, a muddy ambient swirl of sound, simple strummed guitars smeared into streaks of grey and brown, draped over a strange mechanical whirring, the sounds eventually blending into a warm droning shimmer, while over the top drift little crackles of feedback, crumbling clatter, various creaks and thumps, and barely audible voices. None of those extraneous sounds detract from the static mesmer though, with the drone eventually taking on more of an electronic vibe, with the guitar and whir being joined by layers of static and glitchy hiss, all blurred into a single slow shifting expanse of dark ambience. The second track is even more minimal, with the same sound somehow muted into a mumbled low end drift, while a minimal melody is played out over the top by an oscillating tone that buzzes in and out like a tiny swarm of electronic insects. Before too long however, the track becomes more lively, as the sound expands to include bits of clatter, chimes and percussion, low end guitar thrum, wheezing keyboard, skronking horns, fluttering flutes, bits of FX and processed voices, the sound becoming distinctly more 'free folk' than strictly dreamy and droney." - Aquarius Records LIVE IN DEATH - cs (Bread & Animals, 2007) "Everything I had heard by this band previously was deeply vague, hushed, Finnish intimacy. So I wasn't prepared for this. A paint-soaked 1-sided CS collecting 3 wild live recordings from shows in France and...somewhere else (the writing/info is mainly illegible), Live In Death finds Uton in a far more fucked and confrontational headspace. The "Live in Paris" jam builds from standard Fonal-style post-folk clatter into a racing, ritual frenzy dense with electric menace and group death focus. Easily the single most powerful Uton recording I've ever heard. The second piece, "Live in Reims," is even more fried and wigged-out, with freaky exorcism vocal convulsions and shuddering tonal meltdowns. In person, this must've KILLED. Senselessly, the insert is covered with elementary school squirrels nibbling on nuts. Oh, Lieven" - Cassette Gods Reviews HIGHWAY NATION - cdr (Barl Fire, 2006) "Quite possibly the most haunting and lovely record yet from these mysterious Finnish free drone explorers. While on other records, Uton have dabbled in more cacophonous noise rock and clattery free folk, Highway Nation is purely a dreamy drone record, deep, dark and utterly sublime. Each track a mysterious sonic drift through a slow shifting soundscape of barely shifting shimmer, Like sitting on a mist enshrouded mountain top, watching a huge freighter drift by, way out at sea, the churning sound of the water, and the thrum of the freighter's engines reduced to a murky murmur. Elsewhere, bits of bowed metal spread out into glistening sheets of upper register whir, dense with subtle overtones and buried melodies. So serene and delicate, abstract and ethereal. The sort of perfect ambient dronemusic that should most definitely appeal to fans of Coleclough, Chalk, Wright (Peter AND Nigel), Mirror, Seht, and similar minded sound sculptors..." - Aquarius Records LIVE IN THE CENTER OF THE WORLD - cs (Black Horizons, 2007) "Attention FINNISH music FREEKS!!! Maybe most Finnish bands are crazy prolific, but one of our favorites keeps a much lower profile, the mighty Uton. It's been a little while since we heard from these guys, but as always, well worth the wait. Expansive and abstract, Uton create baffling alien universes of sound, minimal, but somehow dense and alive. Here's it's distant skree and mysterious scrapes, hissy clouds of static, reverb drenched melodies sent careening into the black void, rhythmic crunch and deep cavernous swells, subtle rumblings and washed out ambience. Gorgeous and haunting, creepy and amazing, of all the Finnish groups, we're still a little surprised that more folks aren't freaking out more about these guys. As if that weren't enough, the flipside is just the A side in reverse, a glorious gorgeous dizzying warbly backwards world of sound, and you know how much we love backwards sound!! Way recommended." - Aquarius Records PSEUDOHUMANOID - cdr (PseudoArcana, 2004) "From the wilds of Finland, via the wilds of New Zealand, comes this burbling cauldron of pagan-free-folk-noise from the mysterious outfit known as Uton. Jewelled Antler released a three inch cd a while back, but this full length really allows Uton to do what they do best, spread waaaaay out, and unfurl a thick spiky carpet of jangle and shimmer, amplifier grit and instrument buzz, clumsy primitive percussion, and creepy ambience. Finnophiles are probably already hip to these guys, but for all of you into No Neck, Thuja, Sunburned Hand and all things drone-y and Krautrocky, check this out!" - Aquarius Records WHISPERS FROM THE WOODS - triple cd (Last Visible Dog, 2005) "Once again, the very patient prevail. Or at least the folks who weren't lucky enough to catch any of these super limited cd-r's first time around. A massive triple disc collection that gathers about three hours of early releases from Finland's Uton. Sonically similar to their Finnish free folk brethren (Avarus, Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystavat, etc.), Uton specialize in wild and wooly, primitive free forest jams. Clattery rhythms, music box melodies, spaced out guitar echo, minimal vocalization, skronking horns and plenty of droning and rattling and scraping and thumping. Like a krautrock band that was left in the forest by it's parents and raised by wild woodland creatures. Epic and expansive sonic explorations, as spaced out as they are earthbound, soaring otherworldly freakouts collide with centuries old primal sound, to create a totally organic, totally alien wonderful world of sonic experimentation, sometimes percussive and propulsive, sometimes shimmery and dreamlike, sometimes crashing and pounding, sometimes gentle and mysterious but always completely mesmerizing and amazing! Quite possibly one of our Finnish faves! And that's saying a lot!" - Aquarius Records "Imagine for a moment... you are walking through a dense forest, the day is coming to an end and soon it will be dark. Around you strange animal calls howl through the trees as the sun slips behind the horizon you can barely glimpse. Warmth from the sun is evaporating quickly and a chill now occupies the air. As the light fades a wind starts to build, slowly at first but with ferocious intent. You are lost, hopelessly and impossibly lost. Every branch looks the same, the path worn out and indistinguishable in the night. Repressed fear starts to grip you, fear turning to unacknowledged terror, the prickles on your skin merging with the shivers from the increasing cold. A blanket of darkness slowly descends from the tree tops rolling down towards you. As each layer of trees become dark they become alive with dancing fireflies, calls across the treetops and the creak of movement. Soon it will be black, not dark, but all enveloping blackness with even the stars removed from sight. Then you become aware, aware of lights that are not stars, lights that are eyes, eyes of slit yellow, of the infernal looking intently towards you. The calls of these infernal manifestations, the forest children chatter out in exultation for this is their domain and humanity has no meaning here anymore. Thunder rips apart the sky but comes as a brief respite until little cracks down and for a second reveals the full abominable physical horror surrounding you, until this terror filled sight is mercifully ended. You try to run but immediately hit a tree, fall down in sharp pain and brush against something furry squirming in excitement. Over a period of seconds, things begin to move across your skin, your primal screams of stark dread useless and lost in a second. Tongues begin to lick the pores and hairs of your limbs. Soon you will be theirs and thankfully this will be over until you wake again...knowing the forest children wait again as you drift to the disturbed sleep of the dark woods...your hands gripping the bed you are lulled to sleep by a feral music coming from unseen speakers. You cannot resist any more and hear the calls of the forest in your ears. As you fade away the last sight is the word 'Uton'...... Over the last few years the term 'forest folk' was coined to describe a kind of unrestricted improvised music which felt as though it came from and belonged to the forest. This music had little structure to speak off and was formed from soundscapes using acoustic instruments, hand drums, reeds, blown pipes, stones and whatever else seemed appropriate. In particular this music was to be associated with the plethora of musicians coming out of Finland. Whilst a cliché it is perhaps an understandable one, the majority of Finland's landscape is unchanged forest. It is true that many of these musicians come from the cities with little exposure to this but still there does seem to be an intuitive connection. It is not the literal forest that matters, but the idea of forest as preserved, unchanged places, of imagination and freedom that is more important. This is especially true in the case of Finnish musician 'Uton'. This 3 CD retrospective covers Cdrs issued on labels such as Haamumaa, Hammasratas and Jewelled Antler between 2002 and 2004, the formative years of the artist's emergence. These obscure Cdrs and compilation inclusions document a music that is further out than almost any other artist. There is no sense of restriction here and the use of the forest in imagery and album title is deliberate. Inside the booklet are pictures of empty woods, almost seen creatures, lonely humans and arcane symbols made from twisted wood. This immediately links back to the original 'Blair Witch Project' film and it is that building dread and realisation of being utterly out of civilisation that is so powerful to Uton. The pieces will quite honestly send many people screaming, so stark are they. But they document a head clearing, an ability to mentally leave behind the compliance and conformity of society and even musical structure. Instead they occupy that space in the woods and in truth aren't all dread filled, many are soft evocations with moments of delightful melody. But let us not deny how strange and alien to our culture much of this music sounds. It is as though someone has written symphonies to the animals, the unseen, the noises at the edge of our perception, the thickets where thorns tear at the skin, where birds fly just out of vision. That is why I started this review as I did, it is easier to describe this music in terms of the writing of Algernon Blackwood than it is in terms of The Incredible String Band or Espers. Describing individual music pieces would be both impossible and pointless as they merge into the air and change like the weather in slow movements. Over the course of three Cds, left on as you go about your life the Cds almost merge with the atmosphere and become unnoticed but with an altering of the air around you. On this page the closest comparison would be Thuja and it is therefore not surprising that one of the Cdrs included was issued on their 'Jewelled Antler' imprint. Both artists work broadly in improvised acoustic music. Of the two Thuja's is a lighter, slightly more accessible music but for most that will be like talking about degrees of pain. There are those like myself who are drawn to this music, for whom it feels as much a compulsion as a choice. There is a physicality to the imagined forests Uton conjours. Indeed this does not feel like music composition and sounds like the outcome of aural alchemy, working with the air and trees themselves. Some of the recent releases have decidedly softened the music, taken it into calming even pastoral areas and these are beautiful essential releases. As 'Sunmilk' he has also gone even further out and with his children made a free folk music of bark licking, demented yellow eyed children. However here the story begins and what an unsettling one it is. Whether liked or loathed it will not be forgotten. You may think this a strange or pretentious review, which reflects the difficulty of describing a music which has no structure or genre and for which we have no language. The question is not whether it will take you to these dark woods, the question is can you leave again when you want to? " - Unbroken Circle "It takes a certain kind of label to release a massive triple CD set with a relatively unknown Finnish experimentalist. Providence, RI-based Last Visible Dog is such a label and I love them for that very reason. That pretty much every single thing they choose to put out is sonically amazing is almost beside the point. What's important is that there are no visible or invisible barriers, no restrictions about Last Visible Dog, just passion for peripheral sounds and a willingness to spread the gospel about artists that are incredibly talented but somehow remains criminally overlooked. All this is very much the case with Uton, the home for Jani Hirvonen's solo music. Whispers from the Woods is despite its magnitude, a perfect introduction to this overlooked sound champion as it beautifully displays the different aspects and sides of his solemn but somewhat claustrophobic drones, meandering electronic soundscapes, clattery rhythms and plucked acoustic instrumentation. This collection contains everything from 'Taman Sanan Jalkeen' (CD-R released on Haamumaa in 2002), all of 'Mika Kasvaa Maan Sisalla' (CD-R released on Hammasratas in 2003), all of the Jewelled Antler-released 'Ay Um Au Lam,' five rare compilation tracks and six previously unreleased tracks. Over the span of more than three hours of recordings Uton turns on a pretty fantastic ancient drone machine that conjures spacious yet occasionally harsh sounds, which land somewhere between the thermal pools of southern New Zealand and the Finnish woodlands. Hirvonen doesn't turn the machine off until your mind is transported to down under, or at least to some sort of unknown and mysterious realm. In its best moments this is just as good as the crown jewels from Flies Inside the Sun's repertoire and its various off-shots, but you're as likely to hear Coil or the organic sound textures of some of the early Krautrock explorers when listening to this. Vibracathedral Orchestra-like droning strings wrestle with minimal guitar scratchings and flutes, and although remaining on the difficult side of fringe music, this still works like balsam for the warped mind, and its organic qualities are as mesmerizing as they are surprising. - Mats Gustafsson / Terrascope ZWUIJ - 3"cdr (Jewelled Antler, 2004) "The Jewelled Antler collective offers another record outside their immediate ranks of Thuja and company. Although they've had a couple of CD-R releases popping up from tiny labels around the globe, this is our introduction to Uton. This anonymous, acoustic-noise-drone band hails from Finland, although they seem far more at home within the New Zealand community of Birchville Cat Motel, Anthony Milton, and Handful of Dust. "Zwuiji" is the 7th in the continuously impressive "Library Series" of 3" CD-Rs from Jewelled Antler, but is a bit more grating than most from the collective which typically opiates themselves with hazy improvised psychedelia and obtuse folk renderings. Rather Uton revels in mistreating their electric gear in order to fill up the audio specturm with buzzing drones that swarm out of their amplifiers like angry wasps. Scratchy violins and atonally shifting wind instruments hover behind these gritty walls of vibrating feedback which comes across more as a misaligned engine block rattling all of those tones inside your head than as a typical trick with a couple of effects boxes." - Aquarius Records

reviews of MYSTERY REVOLUTION - CD (Digitalis, 2006)

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 06:14:58 -0800

"Tampere, Finland has become quite the musical hotbed over the past few years. Staples like Avarus and Kemialliset Ystävät make their beds in the gnome-infested waters throughout the city. Uton is perhaps the country's best kept secret. Mystery Revolution is a sonic excursion through the Finnish forests unlike any other. Massive drones are balanced by the hypnotic dance of flutes, bells, and keyboards. Underneath everything runs a mind-altering stream of fuzzed-out brainwaves. Every corner you turn, there's another smiling nymph, begging you to follow the golden path into the mystic woods. Uton's minimalist rumblings are there to infect and enchant, and Hirvonen never fails to impress. The mask is off with Mystery Revolution, and Uton will remain shrouded in obscurity no more. This pine-scented excursion may be mysterious on the surface, but overall is a thing of beauty, lying in wait for the perfect time to infect you. Mystery Revolution is proof that Uton's dreamy soundscapes are one of Finland's finest exports." - Digitalis "I realise I spend a lot of time banging on about Finland, droney improvisational hippy music, distorted tape sounds and experimental warbling and clattering, so imagine my joy when a disc arrived which ticked all of these boxes within the first 5 minutes. Coming across like a faint signal of life from far away planets, Uton is best aligned with the subtle noodlings of Jewelled Antler lynchpins Thuja, with distorted analogue synthesizers, bowed guitars and unnamed small instruments blended together to form a sort of audio fog. This is how minimal music should sound, it's not minimal to the point of forcing you to try and hear if there's anything happening at all, it's merely quiet and underplayed and it is painstakingly woven together with an incredible display of skill and restraint. More interestingly though, there's a huge chunk of Radiophonic Workshop/Early Electronic style experimentation on offer here, more in line with something you'd hear on the hallowed Ohm boxset than maybe on your latest collection of 'free folk'. We have heard this angle explored by Kemialliset Ystävät in his Fonal emissions, yet Uton takes things one step further and succeed on all counts. There are even moments on 'Mystery Revolution' that wouldn't be out of place accompanying Cybermen as they escape an icy tomb... Probably my favourite release on the crucial Digitalis label, Uton has forged a timeless addition to the mysterious Finnish avant garde." - Boomkat "At first I thought the cloud of popping and cracking sound that Uton opens this album with was going to resolve into a soft commotion of rhythm and melody. "Aikavirta" suggests crescendo and prologue, the slow accumulation of tension that makes every release such a wonderful feeling. I waited and waited somewhere until I realized that what I was hearing composed the whole of the album. I like abstract music a lot, but the best abstract has to offer always makes some reference to form and structure. Even the most nebulous albums ranked among my favorites feel as though they're traveling somewhere. If not, they're sustaining some sound, thought, or feeling that warrants such stasis. Mystery Revolution, on the other hand, begins adrift and ends adrift, without much in the middle to suggest a journey ever occurred. Flutes, whistles, bells, chimes, analogue bellows, and all manner of fascinating source material manages never to come together for Uton. Whatever mystery his foggy music hides stays that way until they very end, negating and reflecting any light that even comes close to it. Strings buzz and shift restlessly on "Taivaan Sini Sokea (Soikea)," but never do more than that. They don't necessarily match very well with the other sounds on the song, they do not add to whatever sensation the song inspires (in my case, I feel almost nothing listening to this record), and they certainly don't seem to be arranged very well, becoming lost in the rest of the music. Everything seems to be arranged without forethought or plan. Improvised music has its place and there are plenty of people who will swear by the possibilities it presents to the musicians and the audience when it is performed, but in this particular case all I get out of listening to this record is a little bit of frustration. Uton has a knack for picking out some interesting noise, but his talent for arrangement is his Achilles' heel." - Lucas Schleicher / Brainwashed "Like Avarus and Kemialliset Ystävät, Uton, or to put a name to the noise - Jani Hirvonen - hails from the improvisational wellspring of Tampere, Finland. But unlike the extroverted communal strum and clatter of those outfits, the Uton trades in dark ambience and virtual formlessness. Uton makes music that sounds like decaying echoes: sounds left behind when others have switched off their electronics and packed up their acoustics and called it quits for the night. As the sleeve for 'Mystery Revolution' puts it: "inside the dreams, behind and beyond". 'Mystery Revolution' contains nine relatively short pieces that track like alien shortwave. Together they form the kind of work that somewhat lazily gets classified as "forest music". I'd say not, personally. Tracks are formed of icy drones, unidentifiable sounds from an occluded palette of acoustic instrumentation, and informed by a refusal to coalesce into rhythmic structures. This music, with its pervading sense of urban alienation, seems to connect more to the industrial and isolationist. Its beauty is in assembly and flow, and tracks seamlessly transition from one to the next, like the scene transitions that make perfect sense in dreams but are seen to be, on awakening, surreal. Good to see Digitalis continuing their mission to bring the wilfully obscure from the CD-R underground to more generally available production CDs. 'Highway Nation' finds Uton on the more typical CD-R format, with five tracks that present some of the project's most minimalist work (which is saying something). Compared to 'Mystery Revolution' tracks are longer, with more drones and less in the way of bells, flutes and stringed instruments. These are compositions to upload into the computers of deep space probes to use as beacon transmissions. Tracks are untitled, furthering their claim to anonymity. Nothing much other than steady-state drone is on the menu here, with slight shifts in frequency differentiating tracks. There are common points of reference with some of the minimalist work in the mid-period of Coil's catalogue, but this is more dreamlike, meditative and obscure. Like most works of true minimalism, 'Highway Nation' is best heard at high volume levels in a reverberant space, allowing the sounds to bounce of everything, reinforcing or cancelling themselves at intersection points, and creating entirely new works depending on the variables of playback equipment, environment and mind-set. - Tony Dale / Terrascope (reviewed with Highway Nation CDR album) "The music by one-man band Uton is like a mirage; just when you think you've got your hands on it, it turns immaterial and melts away. Jani Hirvonen, who comes from from Tampere, Finland, deploys sounds with extraordinary care. Random-sounding percussion, droning keyboards, hesitantly plucked strings, and echo-bathed flutes drift in and out of the mix like ghosts moving on and off the stage of some eldritch pageant set in a crumbling factory at the edge of an old-growth forest. "Naurumme Hetken (Seuranna Otto)" would be a fitting soundtrack for some spook house; the keys hover for a time and then wind down while chimes clank and toll, blinking in and out like glimpses of some distant torch procession. "Taivaan Sini Sokea (Soikea)" is even more eerie; guitar licks slither and writhe like tentacles, grasping after the wordless singer who sounds like he might be trying to crawl out of the track on all fours. "Kuun Käsi Kävelee" plays up the music's mechanistic elements; while flutes call forlornly from the next hill, synth bursts start and stop like a truck whose engine won't quite turn over. The following track "Unohdettu Välipala" leads with an asthmatic squeezebox, but monster-movie organs overtake it like little green men engulfing a space age Gulliver with tangled cables of twisted melody. Hirvonen makes especially apposite use of shortwave radio on "Psykosoaattinen Luuranko"; its distorted voices and crumbling static ooze around a music-box tune like some malevolent fog covering the advance of just-landed aliens. But as nifty as Uton's music sounds, each piece recedes from memory as soon it ends, like a spell whose power only lasts while it's being recited." - Bill Meyer / Dusted

reviews of ALITAJU YLIMINÄ - LP (Dekorder, 2007)

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 05:56:56 -0800

UTON IS THE ONE-MAN PROJECT OF JANI HIRVONEN ORIGINALLY HAILING FROM TAMPERE AND CURRENTLY TRAVELLING AND RECORDING IN INDIA. HIRVONEN IS ONE OF THE MOST ACTIVE MUSICIANS OF THE FINNISH UNDERGROUND SCENE THAT HAS RECENTLY PRESENTED US THE LIKES OF KUUPUU, KEMIALLISET YSTÄVÄT, ISLAJA, PAAVOHARJU AND LAU NAU AND A SEEMINGLY NEVER-ENDING STREAM OF BEAUTIFUL AND HIGHLY ORIGINAL RECORD RELEASES. THE MUSIC OF UTON IS NO EXCEPTION THERE, DRAWING INSPIRATIONS FROM PSYCHEDELIA TO FREE JAZZ TO PURE ECSTATIC DRONES AND NOISES USING A WIDE RANGE OF ACOUSTIC INSTRUMENTS FROM VARIOUS PARTS OF THE GLOBE AND A BULK OF ELECTRONICS. RECORDED IN GLORIOUS LO-FI THE MYSTERY OF HIRVONEN'S SOUND IS DIFFICULT TO PINPOINT; SHEER RAVISHING BEAUTY, ELEGANCY AND VARIEGATION IS STASHED BEHIND A WALL OF GREY, INSCRUTABLE HAZE - GORGEOUS MELODIES AND VOICES, REEDS AND ALIEN SOUNDS GLEAMING THROUGH THE MIST FROM TIME TO TIME, SHIMMERING LIKE DIAMONDS THROUGH LAYERS OF DUST - Dekoder (from the label press release) "Following their excellent CD on Digitalis, Uton deliver an album of some depth here for Dekorder. Although it follows a similar pattern of intense, beautiful guitar drone, followed by a more abstract, experimental style then back again, for me this has an excellent, cohesive feel that never alienates. When it's got you in the deeper moments, you really do get carried along with it. Lovely artwork too and a good bit of oddball music to accompany you over the coming weeks. Great stuff." - Smallfish Records "The fact that German label Dekorder are here and ready to put some of the worlds most obscure music on vinyl (and high quality vinyl at that... no surface noise baby) makes me just that little bit happier to be alive. With labels like this out there it feels like music might be in safe hands, and with any luck they'll have the sales to justify the outlay, and certainly this latest record from Finnish psychedelic dronester Uton is well worth spending your hard-earned on. Following on nicely from his killer releases on Digitalis, 'Alitaju Ylimina' (don't ask me to translate that, please!) is a simply shocking dictat in all that is faded and tape saturated. It almost sounds like your brain has melted through the grates into a world of wood shavings and burnt polystyrene, a world where every sound is filtered through ten feet of fibreglass so your ears can only pick up traces of the melodic subtlety. I'm a big fan of Uton so it's hardly fair to comment but I think this might be his most coherent record yet, blending the more electronic, ambient sounds with the plucked folk instrumentation you might expect to hear on a Kemialliset Ystavat record." - Boomkat "I recently read quite a fitting comment on the music of Uton stating that you listen to it and after a while you forget what you had been listening to for the last five or ten minutes. The same is true for "Alitaju Ylimina". It captures twelve compositions in five tunes which mostly feature electronics, flutes, percussion and other gadgets. And also on these five tunes Uton´s sounds are so fluid that it´s really hard to grasp and remember them. At the same time though they capture the listener completely. While some of Uton´s music can be quite boring, "Alitaju Ylimina" is among the best I´ve heard from him. The tunes contained on the LP were partly recorded in a studio and are quite opulent compared to some of his other output. The LP is split up into the "Utopia" and the "Atopia" sides, and especially the "Utopia" side features a more noisy Uton than usual. Electronic loops, distant and blurry flutes, what seems like distorted vocals, railroad sounds and tons of other sound sources join together to create a truly unholy and ghostly atmosphere. The "Atopia" side starts out more quiet with morphing drones, violins and flutes before changing into a full force drilling noisy section. At least I haven´t heard Uton as abrasive and repelling as on this section, but it suits him quite well and makes his music more challenging. Track 2 on the "Atopia" side is less aggressive, but equally discomforting. Here, Uton uses children´s voices, adult gibberish, harmonium, some kind of wooden glockenspiel type instrument and other sound sources. The "Atopia" side ends with a percussion driven 70s type tune that has a very tribal vibe with its fierce flute playing. "Alitaju Yliminia" definitely seems to mark a change in Uton´s catalogue moving away from his minimalist dronescapes into more varied territory. It´s something that sounds well worth pursuing." - Stephan Bauer / Foxy Digitalis "uton is the the pseudonymn of finnish national, current india traveller, and shop favourite jani hiroven. drawing influences from free noise and tonal drone experiments he is conjouring up some of the most interestingly outthere sounds this side of 2000. this lovingly packaged lp is no exception, being a classic example of his hushed beauty infused creaking alien sounds, though no description will ever do it justice!" - Rough Trade "After a slew of CDRs and cassettes, Alitaju Ylimina is the first vinyl release by Jani Hirvonen, one of the most active members of what seems to be an insanely active Finnish underground including kindred spirits Lau Nau, Kuupuu, Islaja, and Kemialliset Ystävät, to name but a few. Not surprisingly Hirvonen has already hooked up with similar adventurers in the free psychedelic / trance / experimental scene elsewhere, collaborating with the likes of Anla Courtis, Peter Wright and Phil Todd. Musically, it's hard to pinpoint; "glorious lo-fi", says the Dekorder website, and that's a rather good description - we're not talking scuzzy lo-fi Arthur Doyle-at-home-with-his-Walkman or some of the vintage Saturns that sound as if they were recorded inside a shoebox - lo-fi this might be but it's not at all lacking in definition and depth. There's a freshness to it all, a commendably unpretentious love of sound in all its forms, a willingness to explore the worlds of drone, soft noise and free folk as a tourist rather than a paid-up subscriber just following the house rules. For when those rules come to be written - and it will eventually happen in this scene just as it has with free jazz, improv and field recording-based sound art - the muscles will atrophy, the music will become formulaic and clean, and people like Hirvonen will probably end up playing at ATP or something equally terrifying. Until that day comes, enjoy your freedom. If anybody in particular springs to mind on listening to this, it's Angus MacLise (maybe those strange snaking flute improvisations and percussion freakouts towards the end of the "Atopia" side), one of the few who chose to quit the corporate game rather than play along. So maybe it's no surprise to learn that Hirvonen, like MacLise before him, has gone off to the Indian subcontinent. I look forward to hearing what he brings back."- DW / Paris Transatlantic "First ever vinyl album from this mysterious European psychedelic communal drone/action unit in an edition of 500 copies with fold-out art sleeves featuring art by Uton on the outside and art from Dutch artist Christelle Gualdi on the inner. The actual sonics shift from almost MEV-scale electro-acoustic destruction into doomy halflights of subliminal melody caught up in vortices of metal and teeth." - Volcanic Tongue "The German Dekorder label has a very nice habit of releasing excellent stuff on vinyl. Finnish Uton's Alitaju Ylimina is no exception. If you've been a fan of Uton's (AKA Jani Hirvonen) previous outings on labels such as Jewelled Antler, Pseudo Arcana, Last Visible Dog, Digitalis and Ikuisuus it goes without saying that these electro-acoustic sound collages and noise-clad drones will feel right at home in your record collection. Droning strings wrestle with lo-fi electronics, minimal guitar scratchings, shamanic folk structures and distant traces of jazz ideas, and although definitely remaining on the difficult side of fringe music, this multi-faceted piece of beautiful vinyl still works like balsam for the warped mind." - Broken Face "I could have used the same intro here, that I wrote for the Black To Comm / Aosuke -split album (http://www.monochrom.at/cracked/reviews/Rev%20blacktocomm4.htm) also on Dekorder, but one always comes first as long as we live in a dimension that is dominated by time. But without time there would be no music, so let's be glad that we are able to not only percieve the fourth dimension but to also grace it and adorn it with sounds and their managed evolution. Hah, calling music the "managed evolution of sound in realtime" is way too over the top for me, actually, but then Uton is also not easy to get a grip on. So, please read that mentioned intro first and then come back here to read about Uton. Jani Hirvonen is a long standing, well known avantgarde / underground musician / experimenter from Finland. You can see right away from the slashes being used in this description that allow for at least four different variations that it is not easy to measure him up. "alitaju ylimina" contains all kinds of weird drones, noise outbursts, ecstasy and mysticism, psychedelia and free jazz, multi instrumentalism and manipulation of sounds and a lot more. Can you imagine what this guy's extended discography sounds like? He has released dozens of CDs, CDRs and tapes and has collaborated with anybody that found his way into the woods where this ghost resides. A certain kind of inner spirituality seems to play an important role in Uton's music. Not only because of the, probably mostly cliché, reclusiveness of the Finnish and the therefore attributed closeness to nature and the endless and dangerous wilderness of the Finnish outlands, but also because his songs tend to turn into manic chants and magic disruptions. Crying vocals of shamanic loops with fitting percussion feeding itself into a frenzy and crashing percussions mixed with echoing noises and deep sounds that reverb through what might be time and space - didn't we mention time as being really important in the beginning? - and far away in both. The colourful and intriguing cover gives away a sort of earth spirit sentiment, with a goldike creature towering above a stylized earth globe, blowing flames downwards to the surface and loosening the widely spun connections between earth and the heavens. (the foldout cover is shown above turned sideways - just drop your head to the right and you can get a glimpse of all its glory.) This is contrasted by a wild, energetic black and white drawings that are somewhere between traditional Japanese paintings and a psychotic drug attack. To me it looks like nightly paintings of a nightmare that played in a wood, with nothing much more in memory but the fierceness of the trees. What exactly makes up the magic and the fascination with this record is hard to say. Everything seems to change all the time and as soon as you think you have found our way through a certain song or track, it changes again. Or maybe it is a completely new song? There is also no help through this dark wood of sound connotations and mystic noises, other than what is already inside you. And according to some mystic wisdom of nature, there is nothing that is not inside you. Now use the puzzlement that lies within this paradox logic to step forward into the breach that opens between these sentiments. Hirvonen nevertheless will always be several steps ahead of you. It seems evident that he has either created his own mystic universe or that he is an experienced explorer of the psychedelic universe. One thing is for sure though, there is not a lot on this planet that is even closely comparable to the unique wisdom and vision of Uton." - Monochrom "For every band that manages a record every few months, there are bands who we like just as much, but who we don't hear from nearly enough. Such is the case with Finnish combo Uton. In the space of time it takes for us to get a new record from these guys, a band like Circle spit out 2 or 3 (even more if you count side projects). But with Uton it's well worth the wait. Alitaju is another epic expanse of mysterious murk and long form ambience. A dizzying mix of Finnish free folk, and haunting dark ambience. Uton's sound is always both massive and cavernous, as well as intimate and highly detailed. This record is no different. Uton drags us along on a strange and wondrous journey through long muddy swirls of muted melody and wide open stretches of indistinct blur and shadow, almost festive percussion jams draped over wheezing accordions and distorted feedback, all wrapped in foggy swirls of fuzz, chaotic free jazz freakouts with mad drumming, and wildly fluttering flutes, and all stops in between. The long tracks here tend to be slow moving glacial crawls, with all the instruments smeared into one blurry whole, a drifting stretch of warm muted soft sound, that just sort of envelops you with it's haunting mystery and dense creeping beauty, those tracks separated by the more rhythmic passages, almost like a rise in the road,where the fog clears and you can see for miles into the distance, before you dip back down under cover of the grey clouds and billowing fog. As always, gorgeous and mysterious." - Aquarius Records