Kemialliset Ystävät – Ullakkopalo / Islaja – Keraaminen Pää

It was an icy, bright winter morning somewhere in central Finland. The sun hung low in the sky, tentatively looking out over the frozen marshes, snow-burdened trees, and lonely drunks crawling out of lonely bars. It would only be a couple of hours before the sun said, “fuck this,” and went away again. As sharp shadows lengthened across the snowdrifts in his yard, Jan Anderzén had an idea. While the weather is this good, let’s have a yard sale.

He went to the attic and rounded up every piece of junk in sight. Lots of crap had been lying around, he realized: rusty bicycle parts, broken door bells, squeaky dog toys, old pots and pans, even a busted-up old pinball machine. He laid it all out in a proud, meticulous display in the garden. At a balmy minus-10 Celsius, it was a fine day for outdoor shopping, so in due course, the villagers gathered in Jan’s yard to see the wares. But nobody wanted to buy anything. A young woman in a tank top and a scarf picked up Jan’s old toy melodica, played a single note, and smiled sadly.

“What’s wrong?” Jan asked. “Don’t you want it?”

She sighed. “It’s perfect. But none of us can afford anything in this recession.”

Jan nodded. It was true. He was just as skint too. Still, with the whole village gathered thus, it seemed like a waste to just pack everything back up.

“Hey gang,” Jan offered, “forget about the sale. Let’s take all this stuff to the forest, smash it to pieces, and set whatever’s left on fire, all the while chanting about lingonberries and piles of old stones.”

It was the perfect entertainment for a peaceful winter’s day, the villagers agreed. And so off they went, creating an oddly harmonious, joyful racket along the way. Jan was pleased he remembered to bring a tape recorder.

A few weeks later, Jan sat down on the floor in the Fonal Records office with his old friend Sami Sänpäkkilä. “So when are you going to get some chairs in here?” Jan asked.

“As soon as you give me a hit record,”

“I’ve got it right here.”

Sami played Jan’s tape and lay back on the pine floor. He was transfixed. “You Kemialliset Ystävät have really outdone yourselves this time. This is like listening to the leaves, or watching a campfire, or floating down a babbling brook. Playful and light, colourful and textured, infectiously percussive, this is effortless effort, wu-wei, not-music-yet-music. Just one suggestion: Translate the title from the English Attic Fire to the Finnish Ullakkopalo. That way it will be sure to shoot straight to the top of the charts internationally.”

“Of course, sensei.”

Just then, a tall, strange woman floated in through the window, wailing darkly. Jan and Sami ducked in terror.

“Merja!” Sami cried. “It’s you! We were scared half to death. Where the hell have you been anyway?”

“Please, call me Islaja. I had to leave the forest many moons ago. I’ve mostly been in Hong Kong and Berlin.

“What’s that under your arm?”

“Keraaminen Pää.”

“You brought us a ceramic head?”

“It’s the name of my new album.”

The experimental music mogul couldn’t believe his luck. Two new albums on the same day? Sami rubbed his hands. “Let’s have a listen.”

And so Sami Sänpäkkilä, Jan Anderzén, and Merja Kokkonen settled down together on the floor and listened to the new Islaja record. Merja’s ghostly voice seeped into the corners of the reverberant room. The office boomed with dark, chilly synth chords. Heads bobbed to chopped up beats. A piano forlornly but authoritatively sounded dirge-like melodies while Merja’s voice gathered strength, rose up and rang out through the walls and flooded the wintry world beyond. And… was Sami hearing things, or were there hard pop structures lurking beneath the menacing miasma? The big city had indeed changed the former freakfolk queen. Not all of the old hippies would be happy, Sami thought, but Keraaminen Pää was like an exquisitely crafted obsidian dagger. It was Islaja’s most polished and dramatic work to date.

Sami sat up straight. “Islaja, your album is as dark and fierce as Kemialliset Ystävät’s is light and friendly; it is as tight and urban as Ullakkopalo is chaotic and rural. And yet both are sublimely beautiful. There is some essential, dialectical truth about contemporary folk music–and by extension, modern society itself–embodied in these two records. I’m pleased you two came to me today. I think we definitely have a pair of No. 1 chart toppers on our hands. You’ll be bigger than Kanye and Taylor put together.”

Neither Merja nor Jan were sure about that last part. But Sami had been blowing minds running Fonal since 1995, and they weren’t going to argue with the boss in an optimistic mood. “This calls for a celebration,” Sami decided. Outside, darkness fell once more as a fresh dusting of snow deepened the heavy blanket of white. A biting wind blew cruelly off a nearby lake and froze Sami’s exhaled breath solid. “Let’s go get ice cream. It’s on me.”