Kemialliset Ystävät - Ullakkopalo

Kemialliset Ystävät
Ullakkopalo
(2010, Fonal)
RIYL = Paavoharju, Black Dice, Prefuse 73

What can I say; listening to Kemialliset Ystävät makes no logical sense. Ullakkopalo is the latest in a long history of deranged freak-psych adventures from the band and it delivers with similarly delighted, confusing, and totally bizarre results. Based on my recent streak of surreal (anti)reviews, you might’ve thought Kemialliset Ystävät would be the perfect band to send me off into some ridiculous, fabulist mind-trip. Yet, somehow Ullakkopalo has cancelled out any type of coherent imagining in me. The record works to disassemble thought, to confound, to set low one’s sense of cognitive stability. It’s madness, it’s noise, but a pleasant (if ultimately disturbed) madness, and noise music for lovers. Though I’m not sure what that all really means. I guess all I’m saying is that you can listen to the noise-madness on Ullakkopalo and still have a chance at getting away with your soul (though the gypsy maids may have scrubbed it weird in the process). Ullakkopalo, in comparison to their recent tour-only Harmaa Laguuni and last "official" full length in 2007 (their self-titled masterpiece), feels a bit more free-wheeling, a bit more collision-heavy (and what is Kemialliset Ystävät’s music but a series of collisions?), which may make it slightly more difficult, but honestly, who can tell what any one person will take from listening to these Scandinavian weirdoes? It’s anyone’s guess whether or not you’ll still be using ears for hearing, eyes for seeing or feet for walking after the experience. Once Ullakkopalo is through with you, you’ll be lucky if you don’t have an extra set of arms (unless, of course, you’re into that kinda thing). Happy listening.

-Thistle

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

Kemialliset Ystavat - Harmaa Laguuni

Kemialliset Ystavat
Harmaa Laguuni
(2008, Secret Eye)
File Under = Finnish music, aka, nuts/awesome/weird music

To peg Finnish music staple Kemialliset Ystavat as a member of the freak folk movement is not so much a misnomer as an understatement. Sure, you could call him freak folk if you want, but Kemialliset Ystavat is way beyond the freakness of, say, Devendera Banhart or Joanna Newsom. His most recent, Harmaa Laguuni is the result of a long line of way out there interplanetary shi bubbling out of whatever alien voodoo pot the man is cooking this stuff up in. It also is by no means simply folk. There are folksy elements in there, sure - strains of acoustic instrumention, a general ‘organic’ feeling, but folk? My heavens, no. I’m hard pressed to describe this in any standard musical terms; folk, electronica, noise, music concrete, anything utterly and completely bizarre…there is a start. The end is simply: it’s Kemialliset Ystavat. Nothing really compares. Well, maybe if Black Dice and the inhabitants from The Labyrinth (minus David Bowie) got caught in some interplanetary black hole; that might compare. Until that occurs, we can’t really know for sure. Anywho, this is all just a long way of saying Kemialliset Ystavat is unique - unique and utterly mind-altering. Harmaa Laguuni is a limited tour only release that is still floating around a few places online. Spanning 7 tracks and 1,653 musical motifs (at least at my last count), Harmaa Laguuni is all over the place in a way that only Kemialliset Ystavat can control. In fact, I think it may be even more easily digestible than his super duper awesome self titled from last year. Harmaa Laguuni is an excellent exhibit of softcore weirdo noise for the whole family.

-Mr. Thistle

Kemialliset Ystävät - Self Titled

Kemialliset Ystävät
Kemialliset Ystävät
(05.2007, Fonal)
9.0/10

I don't know how my favourite childhood movie, The Labyrinth, has made it into another one of my reviews, but it is really making me wonder what kind of long term damage David Bowie's tight pants may have had on me. Anyway, childhood scarring aside, Kemialliset Ystävät's untitled (and if Wikipedia can be trusted) 40th release baring the band's name seems to be continually conjuring the goblins of Jim Henson's creation. In fact, I am absolutely certain that if they weren't lead by David Bowie (Jarath to you believers), those catchy tunes, glorious in their own right, would quickly turn in to this ramshackle catastrophe. This is a good thing. Kemialliset Ystävät have created an absolutely mind blowing catastrophe. With a veritable circus of instruments and a virtually unlimited amount of musical ideas, Kemialliset Ystävät are, quite simply, the most wonderful thing since, well, The Labyrinth. The unpronounceable Finnish band's name translates to "the chemical friends" which carries its own apt allusions as the band does seem somewhat friendly and certainly have an air of something chemically induced. The effect of the music might take the form of the Boredoms as chopped up and spewed out by an early Animal Collective and then rearranged by Black Dice. That may sound like a complicated description and it probably should be more complicated. When listening, I can't stop thinking about that battle at the end of The Labyrinth when Ludo summons the rocks to battle the goblin hordes. This album would probably be a fitting soundtrack to that scene as well. This is probably a garbled mess of a review but, if so, it is a telling effect of the music. Embarrassingly ambitious and astoundingly rewarding, Kemialliset Ystävät is the party album of the century. In fact, put this Disc/LP/Cassette on at your next party and just see if all the characters from The Labyrinth don't spontaneously appear just like they do for Jennifer Connelly at the end of the movie when Hoggle lovingly offers "…if you need us..."; trust me, you need this!

-Mr. Thistle

Kemialliset Ystävät myspace