Vesikansi by Avarus

LAL-28 / AB-OC-25
CD, co-released with Secret Eye Records in 2006.

Recorded live at The Ladybird Club, Dublin, April 2005.
Thanks to Deserted Village People.

49 minutes of gooey new goodness from Avarus - spread over just three tracks. In the last year, Finland's experimental underground has successfully overtaken the freak music world, and for damn good reasons. From the same tattered coven of piss drinkers who alternately refer to themselves (depending on who shows up to record) as Kemialliset Ystävät, Lau Nau, Pylon, Islaja, Es, Kiila or the Anaksimandros comes this, another Secret Eye release from the mighty Avarus - a follow-up to last year's Jättiläisrotta. These fumbling Finns conjure a smoky, shit-drunk forest of noise, folk and unsurpassable tribal improv. Features guest vocals and casio from Tara Burke (AKA Fursaxa) recorded live in Ireland.

"...Avarus have once again brought out the heavy lumber. On their latest release Vesikansi, the avant-rock collective attain new peaks/depths of crude free-form bewilderment, plunging the listener into a sonic wilderness so dense and impenetrable that one must fight the urge to begin foraging for food and building a treehouse." - Pitchforkmedia.com

"Avarus are one of the cornerstone groups of modern Finnish psychedelia, trailblazers for the recombinant aesthetic pioneered by a small gaggle of artists whose self-released, subterranean music is as baffling and crude as it is celebratory and hilarious. As with compatriots Kemialliset Ystavat, Avarus's line up is often in flux, though it appears to revolve around Roope Eronen and Arttu Partinen, and, on Vesikansi, Fursaxa's Tara Burke joins them on two lengthy live improvisations. Though Avarus often achieve a heightened, concentrated group-mind, they are natural jokers, and this goofy-but-not-dumb sense of humour is reflected by some of their artwork (in this case, an ice cream sundae set adrift on a world map, and a hand-drawn moustachioed octopus) that humour works its way into the music too: the overheated amp noise of "Loylyvesi" is undercut with slurring that sounds as though it's being played back through a tape machine running on low batteries, and around a third of the way through "Vissyvesi", a gloriously idiotic five-note synth riff farts through the murk. Those moments serve to lighten the listening experience, but "Vissyvesi" also detours into an extended wash of beatific hum, and the degraded scour of "Lapsivesi" is brittle and fragile, the magnetic tape about to disintegrate under the recording heads. The real joy in Avarus's music is their ability to negotiate this balancing act, essaying surprising moments of beauty and humour." - Jon Dale in The Wire

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