Review | Songlines

Sanguis Meus, Mama!

Rating: ★★

View album and artist details

Album and Artist Details

Artist/band:

Pekko Käppi & K:H:H:L

Label:

GAEA Records

Aug/Sep/2015

Savu

Artist/band:

Ilkka Heinonen Trio

Label:

Rochdale Records

Aug/Sep/2015

You’ve got to admire the Finns. They revive one of the world's most unpromising instruments – the jouhikko, a rather primitive three-stringed bowed instrument best suited to slow, scratchy playing – and then manage to create compelling music for it. Pekko Käppi and Ilka Heinonen are both jouhikko players. Both have played impressive WOMEX showcases and both are members of Jouhiorkesteri, a brilliant quartet of jouhikko musicians. Again, hats off to the Finnish musical imagination.

These two jouhikko albums are very different in character. Pekka Käppi's Sanguis Meus, Mama! is mainly songs strongly flavoured by rock’n’roll and country music, and driven by guitars and synths. Who is it for? The lyrics are traditional, I think, and they focus on dark mythological matters, with imagery of death, ravens and blood. You’d expect nothing less from a player whose jouhikko is customised with a skull with flashing red eyes. This is Käppi's fourth solo album and he probably feels it's time to push the boat out a bit. Ilka Heinonen's Sava explores the sound and surprising versatility of the instrument much deeper. The opening ‘Erlkönig’ doesn’t sound anything like Grieg's ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’, but taps into the same Nordic mythology; with Nathan Riki Thompson on double bass and Mikko Hassinen on drums and electronics, Heinonen creates a compelling picture. The palette is surprisingly wide, with spectral harmonics, powerful dances and vivid soundscapes.

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