“A caravan of raw sound magic”, the Approximately Infinite Universe tour aims to join the dots between the US psych/noise/drone underground and sympathetic acts on Finland’s Fonal label. The collaborations looked good on paper, but how would they work on stage?
Fursaxa’s psychedelic devotionals for organ and voice are some of the most intensely beautiful music to have come out of the free-folk scene, but performing with Es, aka Fonal boss Sami Sänpäkkilä, she seems a little reigned in, merely accompanying his vocal and Casio loops, rather than developing a true collaboration. Her wordless vocals are as gorgeous as you’d expect, but never get the opportunity to take full flight.
A more fruitful collaboration takes place between Kimialliset Ystavat and Karl Bauer, aka Axolotl. For their first piece, Bauer works through his treated viola and vocal drones, while Ystavat footle away on their guitars and gadgets. Pleasant enough, but it’s with their second piece, a transparent homage to the kosmiche-disco of Manuel Gottsching, that the two acts really push each other. Guitars bubble and float like globules of wax in a lava lamp over a motorik 4/4 beat. Bauer gets to work on an electronic drum pad, adding syncopated Latin percussion fills straight out of a Ricardo Villalobos minimal banger. It’s the last thing you’d expect from this scene, and all the more welcome for it. The latter half of the set drags, the musicians settling into jam-band cosiness, but their finale, based around a Tangerine Dream-go-industrial synth riff, is delightful prog for stoned trolls.
Fine artists in their own right, together Islaja with Blevin Blechdum and Samara Lubelski seem to have a blanding effect on each other. Islaja’s own records avoid pixie folk cliché thanks to their spooky beauty and jarring moments of heaviness, but backed by Blechdum’s disappointingly tame electronics, Merja Kokkonen descends into banal ethereality. A rushing techno number falls flat, Kokkonen’s vocal too airy to give the dated beats the edge they need. Samara Lubelski simply doesn’t have much to do, pitching in some repetitive guitar parts, rarely showing what she’s capable of. A real disappointment.
Dream Triangle, aka Tomuttonttu and Californian duo Skaters, are the only act to hit the kind of zoned-out simultaneity that great improvisation requires. Tomutonttu, aka Jan Anderzén, creates a bed of spectral synth tone, while Spencer Clark and James Ferraro conjure heavenly choirs and spectral gamelan orchestras from their own voices, bamboo pipes and esoteric percussion devices. It’s an utterly blissful, tranced-out sound, building in volume and intensity over a good half hour. Subtle modulations in pitch and texture disorientate the listener in the most delightful way possible, yet the trio expertly maintain the mesmeric mood.
//Stewart Smith