Päivänsäde | id

Päivänsäde are a relatively new Finnish group who draw members from several parallel outfits like Rauhan Orkesteri, Lauhkeat Lampat and Kiila. Their sound is all acoustic and deeply primitive, favouring archaic wooden instruments like the jouhikko, an inelegant knee-fiddle, and the kantele, a zither-like construction that generates high stinging tones. Both traditional Finnish instruments, they have roots that reach deep into the soil and a design that facilitates all sorts of rude accidentals. Unlike many of their associates, the currency of the player’s exchange draws most of its logic from free jazz and their dialogues are primarily defined by supernaturally inspired textural congruity, even when it seems that all the players are headed off on mutually incompatible flightpaths. At points on Puhalluspelto, their debut LP, they sound like an orchestra of Don Aylers, firing blue bugle calls into a furnace of drums. Side two’s opener, “Hiljaa Herätään”, sounds exactly like The Shaggs covering Coltrane’s A Love Supreme using only drums, bells and some soft singing strings. Elsewhere the music is sparse and wide open, with fists of percussion combining with wordless vocals that sound like single blades of grass vibrating in the wind to create one of the most supremely psychedelic listens ever completed without the aid of tie-dye. Fittingly enough, it all sounds like the ends of the world. .