92.

Kemialliset Ystavat
Untitled
(Fonal, 2007)

Listening Kemialliset Ystavat’s self-titled/untitled album for the first time was an absolute revelation. In fact, ‘revelatory’ is probably a good genre to place the band under because nothing else quite works. On this, the pinnacle achievement of mountains of material released under the Kemialliset guise, there is something new and bizarre perking up at every corner, and by corner I mean about every ten to twenty seconds. The album never slows down. As a construction of sound, the album is a monstrosity of noises (both friendly and devious) collaged like some trampy orchestra of ghosts and goblins chanting in the lost Spring of Jupiter. It’s all contradictions in the end, noise music that is really not noise music that is really folk music on every drug that ever existed, which turns out to be some tripped out hybrid hip-hop gluttony. I’ll just leave it at that, and perhaps this: “A-MAZ-ING.”

-Thistle