Jaako Eino Kalevi – Dreamzone EP

Between album EPs always seem strangely hard to pin down. With the EP often used as a pre-cursor to a debut record for new artists testing the musical water, the function of an EP that follows a full-length is sometimes clouded. A bunch of b-sides that didn’t make the last record? A teaser for the next? Care, then, has to be taken to make sure such a record doesn’t simply flutter off into insignificance through lack of purpose.

Dreamzone follows Jaako Eino Kalevi’s Töölö Labyrinth full-length of two years ago, and has been marked out as a teaser for a new LP, due in the spring. The Fin has been turning heads with his lavish, brilliantly eccentric psych-pop, and the pure strangeness of his work can’t be escaped.

At times, Dreamzone wanders off into sectors of wild experimentation, unwilling to be tied down into any formula, style or convention (see “No End’’’s unrelentingly bonkers solo). Amongst the disjointed, free-willed nature of the tracks, though, there are scatterings of with warm, delightful pop hooks, that show for all of Kalevi’s weirdness, he matches it with a serious knack for a tune.

“When You Walk Through Them All” sees Kalevi create something not dissimilar to some of the stuff buried in Arcade Fire’s Reflektor, and shows just one of many dimensions of his enchanting, ever-changing vocal range, somehow channelling both Win Butler and Interpol’s Paul Banks in a verse and a chorus.

There’s no convention in Dreamzone; no markers, no path to follow. This disregard for method is enthralling, and makes the four tracks, above all else, brilliantly exciting to listen to, despite the disjointed nature of the whole thing. It’s a peek into the amazing mind of Jaako Eino Kalevi; see you back here in the spring for the full guided tour.