- Renowned as the central label behind New Weird Finland, Fonal's more accessible releases of roster acts like Kiila and Es often seem to get unfairly overlooked in the face of its more broke-toothed, tangle-haired projects. Label-head Sami Sänpäkkil, the man behind Es, has quietly established himself as one of the roster's most consistently compelling acts, one which pokes and prods around the edges of the innocent and wondrous. Sami composes with an almost charmingly naïve sense of experimentalism that's particularly hard to categorize but instantly recognizable.
If when the night draws in, Fonal acts like Eleanoora Rosenholm and Shogun Kunitoki streak the woods in search of firepits and small forest carnivals, you get the sense Sami's at home, locked in his cabin-room making shadow-puppets in the fading light. From the grainy turntablism of A Love Cycle through the masterful pseudo-ambient sprawl of Sateenkaarisuudelma Sami's albums are rough, evocative blurs of classical music, avant-folk, and a kind of garbage-can sonic playgrounding. They're long-walk records, forest-camp records, green and twilit, embracing both the goofiness and serenity of youth.
For his fifth album, Kesämaan Lapset, Sami's noticeably restrained in comparison to his last two recordings, summing up in a tidy forty-four minutes. But the kitchen-sink approach remains: the record's waning-summer sounds play out on everything from analog synths and violins to trombones and broke-ass Casios. The album's title translates as "The Children of the Summerland," and there's a deep spiritualism in the way he sets about to aurally retrace both the fuzzy nostalgia of childhood and the open freedoms of summer that almost approaches the hymnal.
The title track, in fact, is downright churchy, with its delicate organ patterns and water-splash field recordings, a bit of tattered god-music for those who seek solace, instead, in memories and bright pasts. "Säteet Sun Sielusta" recaptures that song's patient mood-setting, an upright piano slowly finds its own pace against a steady synthesizer line that grows in voice and volume as the track evolves. Like many of Sami's most idyllic creations, it twinkles more than it really glows, cushioning the listener in a soft, flickering light that's meant more for atmosphere than navigation.
But Kesämaan Lapset also indulges in a child's play. "Kesä Ja Hymyilevät Huulet" warbles into a disjointed frolic of Casios; Sami's voice sounds moon-big, reverberating across the track's spastic noodling like the lone voice of reason in a world of crayon-walls and Lego-furniture. Elsewhere, "Ennen Oli Huonommin" drifts along on so many blurts of noise and faint choral washes it begins to sound like a boy sugar-mad with creative lusts, flooding the room with as many sounds and parts as he can play with two hands and one foot. Of course, that's the goal Sami's set for himself here: sketching the messy beauty of summer in youth, those finger-paint days, years of invention and the grace of game.
Tracklist 01. Ennen Oli Huonommin
02. Kesä Ja Hymyilevät Huulet
03. Säteet Sun Sielusta
04. Kesämaan Lapset
05. Haamut Sun Sydämestä