Paavoharju
Laulu laakson kukista

The unreachable down there where the ancient soul slumbers, sending out glimmers. Or maybe, the very bottom of the sea, a dark refuge for the calm and clear whale. Even if it's just a nursery rhyme.

"The whale, poor thing, knows that water harms her, when the storm comes she takes refuge at the bottom of the sea." What? Very stupid? Oh yes, without a doubt. But where is your down there?

It is precisely a down there, the place from which we must start, a down there in the form of a cave. There this "Laulu Laakson Kukista" was conceived, the second album by Pavooharju, a mystical and fabulous weird folk band dedicated to "lo famo strano."

The Pavooharju live (or lived, I'm not sure) in splendid isolation among caves and abandoned buildings. They are strange guys and frequent a sound imaginary made up of sacred hymns, old-fashioned video games, sounds of nature, TV soundtracks, and various oddities.

If you want a straightforward definition of their music, think of an Enya record listened to during a seance. Or intercepted radio waves in a dollhouse.

In any case, it is a kind of ancestral folk scattered across a series of aberrations such as sweetish keyboards, horror delights, buzzings, intermittences, small bells. All inclusive of children, frogs, crows, water, wind. Because field recording reigns supreme.

So, one would never say it, but the more absurd the mixture, the more enjoyable it becomes. It must be related to that story of the princess kissing the frog, refined ones call it unconscious power and (we know it, right?) when there is unconscious power something is bound to happen.

In short, niches of incongruous splendor wrapped in, and I quote the enlightened critic, "the horrible excretions of mass culture, which perhaps then is just a nice phrase to say. In any case, the magic struggling to emerge (that is us, in a sense) is more magical than the magic itself.

But even just magic itself is not kidding. There are indeed moments of pure folkie purity, a very sweet late sunlight ray, the barely hinted nocturnal mystery. And, at times, unexpected snippets of pop delight make their appearance.

Besides, in that famous nursery rhyme, the whale ends up on a swing in the arms of a butterfly, Trallallà...