Lau Nau
Kuutartha

LA RECENSIONE

Finland, present day, perhaps.

Put on a paragliding suit and fly over the ice. The noise you would hear, though I'm being mean, the sweet and mysterious sound you would hear, besides the wind whistling in your ears, is the closest to what this performer has created with her voice and these instruments you see, drawn, on the cover.

A bit of electronics, but not too much, to fill some little space inevitably left by this "orchestra," and here you have a masterpiece of folk. Imagine Cocorosie, even more Nordic, with an even more minimal instrumentation, and that, above all, are as incomprehensible as Finnish can be. A record that is truly a "journey" to a very white and remote place, it doesn't thrill, it transports.

Surely not an easy listening experience, not to be shared, but a beautiful story to enjoy in solitude. The most beautiful "piece" for me is the unpronounceable "Kuljen halki kuufarhan", I have absolutely no idea what it means, but Laura Neukkarinen's voice, this is the artist's real name, beautiful, is accompanied by one of these string instruments played with a bow, ending with a little orchestra of whistles; can sounds in the next track "Sammiolinnut" accompanied by the cries of seagulls and a small voice in the background humming a lullaby. Often, the voice repeats the sound made by the string instruments, differing very slightly, and it is precisely on this dissonance that the entire album is played, not bad at all, and when the "strings" become softly obsessive you really can't distinguish the two sounds anymore, and these are probably the "highest" moments of the entire album. The second piece is also very beautiful, and it is perhaps the only "song" moment, two voices in the finale, accompanied by the difficult timbre of these strange guitars.

Another remarkable production coming from Scandinavia, proving the excellent cultural moment of those regions.