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Joensuu 1685: S/T
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Bone Voyage (BONE-0112)
 Joensuu 1685 is a Helsinki-based trio formed in 2007 playing quite psychedelic, guitar-driven shoegaze/indie rock. This critically acclaimed debut album of theirs was released already in 2008, but I just got my review copy late last year from the band after one of their gigs. The band was also supposed to play at our club prior to the CD when they released their single but they unfortunately had to cancel the gig due to other activities. This review is still at least relatively current, since the album will be released also on vinyl this week! Joensuu 1685 will also be supporting Wolf Parade on their European tour later this month, so it’s possible to see the band live for example in England, France, Holland and Italy.
Joensuu 1685 is a band that has sucked in a lot influences from the 60’s psychedelic garage rock and especially the noisy walls of guitar from the 80’s and 90’s. The attraction towards heady, beautiful gospel moods of Spiritualized and the hypnotic, repetition-based riffs of Spacemen 3 is well evidenced on many tracks. The album was produced by the Bone Voyage boss Asko Keränen who’s known from his band 22-Pistepirkko, and there are also some similarities with this great group, of course. The album begins magnificently with ”(You Shine) Brighter Than Light” that includes pastoral organ, buzzing background guitar and a small-scale rhythm section as well as some great vocals. The over eight-minute-long “Nothingness” is a quite slow piece that’s hypnotic in a narcotic way and strongly brings to mind Spacemen 3. This one has some excellent vocals, and towards the end the track evolves in an effective way and the amount of psychedelic, heavily effected guitars just keeps on growing. The faster ”Kill/Shot/Love” is closer to 60’s garage punk and rocks hard in a nice, ramshackle way. One of the album’s best pieces is “Crystal Light” that starts and ends with a fuzzy organ/effect drone and in between they go with a pretty wild tom-tom beat, repetitive bass, plain vocals and some really psychedelic effects. This is truly hypnotic, trance-inducing stuff! This track will also be included on the forth-coming British Psychedelica 4 compilation which alone proves that it’s a killer… ”Electric Ocean Sailor” is a piece with just some effect drone and vocals and “Sick City” could almost be a 22-Pistepirkko number and also has some acoustic guitar underneath all the echoed sonic structures. ”Gamma-Minus Machine Minder” is a short instrumental that starts off acoustically but ends in cacophonic, experimental and distorted studio manipulation. ”Baby, Baby, Baby” includes screaming, noisy feedback guitars on top of a nice song that rocks in the garage way. This might bring to mind Sonic Youth, The Jesus and the Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine. The album is finished with the excellent “Perfect Grace” that has gospel styled vocals and atmosphere and the music even has some echoes of Velvet Underground, although I guess this is closer to Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized, anyway. The band adds enough echoes to their guitars and also uses loads of other effects which works out superbly in this kind of music. This is a very promising debut album and after seeing the band alive a couple of times I can warmly recommend experiencing their hypnotic and psychedelic music also on gig. Judging by the tasters played on their gigs I’m sure the next album will be even more awesome and mind-blowing!
www.myspace.com/joensuu1685 |
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