Right now I am surrounded by the thick snows of southern Finland, mesmerized by the cold glare of the stars amidst these frozen firs. In the ancient times, shamans and witches summoned the dark spirits of nature using their legendary songcraft, preserved in poetry. Of the battles between the tribes and their quests for truth and valor, tales passed on through tradition from father to son.
To share with you all some of the current Finnish voices still in touch with the archaic ambience of this strange land.
Nostatus uses the legendary instrument
kantele of the folk hero Väinämöinen to enshroud both melancholy and heroic thoughts in an eloquent, elven shine that is very authentic but far from academic, boring ethnomusic.
Tervahäät conjures images of stark old Finnish literature and theatre, the baleful life in the countryside, the joyless faith and eerie memories of abandoned huts by its minimalistic mixture of folk, classical and ritual musics.
Influential and harsh,
Tiermes was formed by members of black doom entity Unholy to explore the hidden trances of darkness of the Lappish shamans by the means of philosophy and psychoactive substances.
The neo-classical slowly drifting but extremely beautiful compositional landscape of
Winter Gardens brings to mind diverse radical conservative acts such as Lord Wind and Von Thronstahl.
The premier cosmic band of Finland,
Zoät-Aon unites the archaic and the futuristic in a Shivan dance of dreamy frequencies akin both to old Klaus Schulze and newer dark ambient such as Lustmord.