Paavoharju / Es

By Andy Battaglia | July 22, 2008 | 4:01am

Music Reviews Music

Paavoharju is part of an
intriguing scene that subsists in Finland but seems to hail from a spirit world
where the natural and the ethereal blur. The latest of several notable
offerings from the Finnish label Fonal, Laulu Laakson Kukista finds the group studiously
adrift, with impressionistic glimmers of sound (bird chirps, static, warbly
chimes) situated within delicate songs that draw on everything from acoustic
folk to the kind of smeary polyglot pop favored by Animal Collective and
especially Gang Gang Dance. The group functions as a collective led by two
born-again Christians, but the sounds they make suggest Christians of an
extraordinarily mystical sort.

The same goes for Es, at least the mystical part.
Es is the working name of Fonal's founder, and his gorgeous two-disc Sateenkaarisuudelma features
a similar tendency to wander even while hewing closer to the rigorous, refined
sounds of the classical avant-garde. The album heaves through all kinds of
swells and drones, but there's something breathless about the way it transpires
as a whole. Like much of what makes Fonal a label worth tracking, it's music
that sounds like it was summoned more than manufactured.