Shogun Kunitoki
Tasankokaiku

Fonal Records is an independent Finnish label, famous for sampling many local bands, active since the mid-90s and practically managed at a family level. They do everything themselves, in the spaces of a small hall converted into a studio. They take care of every aspect of production, from sound engineering to packaging, with a well-matched group of people living in a colorful and creative environment.

Shogun Kunitoki, on the other hand, is a quartet of guys from the same land of lakes, who have a colorful and creative environment in mind, and despite their sound experiments based on the Commodore 64 started in 1998, only in 2006 did they release their debut full-length album titled Tasankokaiku. Label, of course, Fonal Records. A perfect meeting that makes the work of SK dense and enriches the label's workshop with an unusual and certainly interesting band, certified by the worldwide appreciation received from critics (many reviews on the web) and the public.

In the evening I return home with the bug of weariness from pixel abuse and usually put on anesthetic junk to try to soften everything. Nonsense. The bug gets inflamed and gnaws deep down, up to the shield of common sense and responsibility (on which it says IDIOT, YOU NEED TO SLEEP), piercing it and activating the heart-shaped fetish for something even more exhausting, mind-numbing, s'il vous plaît. That's how I discovered Shogun Kunitoki, on a night where hallucinations were no longer enough for me and to make up for the white flag coming out of my ear, I typed confused words on Google until this drooling link popped up to my T-shirt with a V-neck over chest hair. Sly grin of satisfaction and off we go.

It was exactly what I was looking for. Despite much electronic/drone/glacial ambient music, hostile and alienating, and despite many synth pop acrobatics from the dancefloor, far too pop for my taste, I found something new in Tasankokaiku. The boys from the blue cross on a white background start from a concept that sounds something like this: the nihilism of today's electronics does not have the courage to look to the future. It has become present and does not want to realize it. We should return to the intentions of the 60s, to that way of projecting forward. And the electronics that will be but in 2010 - also thanks to them - already is, is a warm building full of all the comforts of home automation in which you live in cohabitation together with psych/electric loops that keep the voltage and temperature of the structure high. Because this album is structured.

As a whole, the individual parts staged by the four lovers of the Commodore 64 are clearly recognizable: a vast knowledge of music from acid rock to 60s electronics, an expanded vision to the best soundtrack compositions (they say they are also inspired by Morricone), a capacity from expanded minds to know how to combine influences ranging from The United States Of America (there is a great review by psychopompe about it) to the Broadcast, Birmingham-based references to whom they make an evident reference. To this, I would add that, among many, they also reminded me of Vanilla Fudge and the post-rock of countless bands but, in particular, the slightly math rock of the Belfast-based And So I Watch You From Afar. But it's better not to rush too much; the bug was lurking.

There are no words in this album where everything is based on the identification of psychotropic dynamics with potentially long range that are not interrupted by a firm closure but only by the consent of our own. This is the only really evident limit I found in Tasankokaiku: the SK decide not to overdo it and to keep their vibrations at bay in always decidedly contained times. Not that I love the mental illnesses of a 25-minute Burzum, but certain trance states could have lasted longer. There are still really interesting and captivating tracks, like the introductory "Montezuma" with its obsessive repetition of a rather mysterious and sixties-like motif under which bits intervene like noise guitars until the intervention of the drum. At that point, a lucid acid rock delirium arises, infested with synthetic "woa woa" that seem to mark the most important moment of the electronic mass. This track already contains everything: the few sounds elaborated in a thousand computeristic distortions seem suitable for establishing contact with aliens for the new version of Close Encounters. This good twilight and baroque wave runs throughout the rest of the release, warm and engaging in pieces like "Tropiikin Kuuma Huuma", with Germanic derivation.

Summing up, or rather, synthesizing, it really seems to me that this is a polymorphic and intelligent psychedelic, cultured and artistic, well-constructed and careful to stay inside and outside certain boundaries. What is missing, I don't know, maybe you will tell me.