Extinct But Still Alive

This is Finnish music collective Mama Longhorn’s fourth album in a 13-year career which has seen them acclaimed as among the most exciting outfits working in the country today. They hail from Pori, a city of some 80,000 inhabitants situated on the estuary of the Kokemäki River, famed for its jazz festival, theatre and live music scene. Pori’s international cultural outlook has certainly seeped into Mama Longhorn, whose latest effort provides a fascinating mixture of Afrobeat rhythms, shuffling funk, explosive guitar and wistful, almost ambient soundscapes, all with a captivating exploratory edge.

Across tracks such as the wonderfully named ‘Reappearing Rhino’, this is a record which lures you into a deep and delicate trip-hop territory one second, before exploding the next, with beautiful brass, dissonant guitars and thumping drums, in an evocative, progressive rock adventure. Sonically, Extinct But Still Alive is balanced to perfection, with a wide open production allowing for suitably rough edges and leaving plenty of space for all the performers to shine. Singer Eeva Poijärvi’s vocals, in particular, are utterly charming, free of histrionics and eminently versatile.