Uzva
Niittoaika

"Tarots and the North" (twelve writings each paired with a Major Arcana by Luis Royo)

"XI. The Last Judgement"

Groping in the darkness of ever-expanding space, modern cosmologists have come to hypothesize that the fate of the universe might depend on the winner of an astronomical tug-of-war between dark energy and gravitational force. The first, if triumphant, would lead to the irreversible distancing of bodies and the consequent disintegration of matter, while the second would cause the opposite effect, bringing planets and every single being closer together until reality collapses upon itself. Two and a half millennia ago, Empedocles of Agrigento formulated a similar reasoning, placing the development of life in the intermediate periods of the realization of each of the two processes and thereby condemning all things to a placid and unnoticeable destruction, "sometimes uniting into a single cosmos through the action of Love, sometimes being dragged each in opposite directions by the hostility of Strife".

This threatening concept is almost untranslatable into a musically valid language, and it urges us to give even more importance to the experimental theorems of the Finnish Uzva, a consortium of daring researchers capable of designing an impressive simulation, obtained by intersecting the dynamic variables of fusion-inspired jazz with the constant and indivisible values of numerous acoustic elements. These recall the cold and solitary winters imprinted in the debut "Tammikuinen Tammela" of 2000 and foreshadow the cosmopolitan fantasies of the imposing "Uoma," which matured six years later.

"Niittoaika" hides in its complicated structures the essence of a strong but sweet liqueur, which gradually reveals its irresistible intoxicating power, acting with extreme delicacy in the background of sophisticated melodic themes and enacting a mutation as stealthy as it is decisive, capable of transforming the face of an opus inaugurated by the most moving harmonies and faded into the primordial chaos of mad dissonances. It's impossible to imagine such a transformation during the listening of Inka Eerola's phantasmagoric violin and its heartbreaking prayers, so filled with genuine devotion as to ignite the air, traversed by the songs of the clarinet, and evoking the instrumental poems celebrated by Giovanni Vigliar and Arturo Vitale at the dawn of the legendary epic of Arti & Mestieri ("Soft Machine").

It is up to the multi-instrumentalist Heikki Puska to divert the creative flow of this class 2002 album towards sunny shores and beneficiaries of the attentions of a fresh and pleasant breeze. He does this first by relying on the gentle lullabies just whispered by the piano, and then by linking his guitar to that of Lauri Kajander during the toasts of festive occasions, in the background of shorelines brightened by the joy of Hanne Eronen's flute and her masterful interpretations of human hopes and fickleness ("Afrodite"). But the sequence of events, punctuated by Olli Kari's vibraphone and the disillusioned considerations of Lassi Kari's bass, shows no slowing down, and ominous clouds obscure the light of once azure expanses now ravaged by the fury of winds, while the profile of gigantic waves confirms the prophecies of Tuure Paalanen's cello, the last witness of the final judgment cast on a world compressed into the cruel mechanics of an unalterable necessity ("Drontti").

Thus falls the curtain on the apocalyptic scenes of a publication often mistakenly considered as radiant and serene as its graceful sisters, only to reveal itself as the guardian of the schemes of opposing cosmic forces, intent on mocking, or perhaps simply ignoring, the fates of the microscopic inhabitants teeming in the infinite abyss cyclically destroyed and reformed by them, at least if one gives credence to the Empedoclean theory that "in Strife everything is different and contrasting, but in Love everything reunites and each thing is seized by the desire of the other, and from them all things that were, are, and will be, germinate".