MicShazam

I'm glad you liked it. She's got 5 albums in total and they're all good, but the following are the best in my opinion:

Palaa Aurinkoon

Her 2nd album. Much in the vein of Ulual Yyy (which is the 3rd). Some of my favorite Islaja tracks are on this disc. The atmosphere of this album is incredible. It also exists with alternate cover artwork, but the one I have looks like the above.

Keraaminen Pää

It's her 4th album. Like the album she would do after, this one takes a more electronic, more accessible direction. The second track on this album is one of my favorite Islaja songs. The album is not as strange as her 5th album, but shows a very different side to her compared to the older albums. I like all her albums, but the follow up to this one might put people off her music and there was no way I was going to pick that one for the album club. This one and the one above were both considered.

On to the review of the current album club pick.

Islaja - Ulual Yyy


This is one of several Finnish artists that I've come to appreciate. I don't know how they raise their kids in Finland, but they all seem to grow up to have a talent for music.

I'm so used to hearing foreign languages in music that I'm not bothered by it at all. If anything, I think it really adds some personality to bands from different places in the world. I really like the way Finnish sounds when sung. It is a beautiful language, even if it looks really unpronouncable in writing.

I think that what attracts me to the music of Islaja is her sense of detail and her feel for the expressiveness of the sounds and instrumental backing that her tracks are build from. Listen to the track Pete P for example. That pulsating bass, skittering drums, that repetitive, almost bell-like keyboard pattern, combined with her slightly deep, slightly breathy and odd singing voice and those occasional chiming accordion like keyboard sounds and the saxophone. It's got this tense drive to it, but it's also lose and flowing at the same time. It was pretty much the track that convinced me to buy her albums. I got chills down my spine when I first heard it!

Pysãhtyneet Planeetat is another favorite of mine off this album. It sounds mournful, slightly eerie, slightly weird. Her careful vocal delivery in the beginning of the track, accompanied by that simple bass progression... then the violins come in and it's just perfect. I can't even describe it. There's some idiosyncratic qualities to her music that speak to on some deeper level.

Sometimes, the album takes a turn into relatively formless music that sounds very jammed and improvised. That kind of thing usually isn't what I will listen to, but there's something about the way those instruments play off each other that sounds really great to me. Plus I really like the way Islaja's odball singing meshes with the music. She makes the arrangements sound more planned than they perhaps were.

I can't decide if this is her best album, or if I would go with the one before this (Palaa Aurinkoon), but they're both great.

9/10