This album is a live recording from January of this year of a concert from the Akusmata Polyphonic Festival at Vuotalo, a cultural centre in Helsinki. Tottumiskysymys are known for their electronic and experimental soundscapes and improvisations. The two previous albums of theirs that I know are bold, obscure and unquestionably imaginative so I fully expected another strange journey.
Looking on the band’s site at photos of the concert from which this recording came, the light effects make it appear as if Tottumiskysymys have turned into Kraftwerk. But it’s the sound we’re interested in. “We do not know the exact process by which mutations occur” repeats a sampled voice over a mysterious drone. Therein, I guess, lies the clue to all of it. It is as if we are deep in space. The voice becomes more distorted. This is outside of our human sphere. The cosmos is doing its thing. We need help. But the message continues. Someone’s out there. Sound waves pass through like winds. Instruments make distorted half notes. There are the makings of an electric storm. Or is this communication? It could be an alien language. Languages don’t need verbs and nouns and things. The language is one of industrial process, more coherent than it may seem and certainly dark. Drums beat randomly, the machine is at work and all the while there’s the distorted squeaking of what could be a saxophone sounding like a code.
Tottumiskysymys use mandolins, olegtrons, synths and a Buchla music easel as well as the bass guitar and drums but it’s the overall ambiance which overrides any individual instrument. And that ambience is mysterious. Something’s happening out there but who knows what it is. It sounds like a product is being manufactured, and a few whirring and mechanical noises suggest that it’s making progress, but I doubt that the end product will make sense to humans. But wait, it’s quieting down. A kind of extra-terrestrial heart beat pumps out. If this is breathing, the asthmatic-sounding person being recorded had better go and see a doctor. Echoey electronic waves constitute the breathing. Yet there’s a bright little tune in what is the darkest of atmospheres. It doesn’t last long, and a sound resembling a car horn springs up. Whoomph – whoomph – is it a machine, an attempt at communication or an invasion? It is actually like early Kraftwerk in some ways. But what I like about this is that however distorted, truncated and avant-garde it is, this is a journey which only our mind and presumably the band themselves can interpret. From mechanical process, we now float through space but it’s far from a solitary or quiet journey as we are surrounded by a series of shimmering and deep horn-like sound waves. The sounds intensify as if there is the onset of an emergency and level out as if the process is taking place of a world being formed. Not a world as any human could understand it of course, but the beating drum seems to be beating something into place as electronic waves and flat patterns create or maybe communicate. It is a language of its own. The electronic drone stands behind the beating drum, and the sequence of deep and watery sounds. Yes, I think someone or something is trying to communicate. The bell chimes distantly. Sounds fire off like someone trying to speak but in an electronic way. The drum now rumbles like thunder underneath these ever increasingly urgent rays of sounds, which have developed the air of a crying child. The electronic cries become more desperate. The drum becomes more powerful and authoritative. Things aren’t going well. For the first time a cacophony of sounds develops and I sense we’re in trouble. And so it ends. In my head I am disturbed because the process and the voices have degenerated into confusion but I don’t know what happened. All I have is my impressions.
For dynamic sound art, come here. Tottumiskysymys create images in the listener’s mind through their use of irregular sounds. Yet these sounds have patterns and loops so in my mind I’m hearing factory processes, cosmic activity, electrical waves and obscure but identifiable communication of an alien kind. The ability to identify sounds and associate them from experience causes Tottumiskysymys to play with my mind. Something is happening but I can’t with certainty say what it is. Amid the instrumental experimentation, I heard something mechanical and I heard voices but not of a worldly kind. And that’s the intriguing part. It’s either that or I’m going mad. Either way, this is 38 minutes of intriguing escapism.
(8.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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