Jan Anderzén last visited WFMU back in 2005 with an army of his Finnish freak-folk compadres including Lau Nau, Islaja, Taikuri Tali, Kuupuu, and Hertta Lussu Assa (the archive from my show here); then he was under his solo monicker Tomutonttu but has returned this year as his perhaps more widely-known project Kemialliset Ystävät. Since the mid-90's KY has perhaps paralleled some of the woodsy, fractured experimental sounds of American outfits like the Tower Recordings; Jan has certainly kept a close ear to the American underground of that era (and has collaborated with many of its players), but one can definitely hear the expansiveness of a Scandinavian sound that traces back to psychedelic godfathers like Trad Gras Och Stenar or Parson Sound. For this visit to the show, Kemialliset Ystävät's improvised jam consisted of Jan with Niko-Matti Ahti, Jaako Tolvi, Sami Sänpäkkilä (whose excellent Fonal label put out several KY releases), and some American pals in tow Spencer Clark (the Skaters), Dave Nuss (No Neck), and Jersey City ex-pat Karl Bauer (Axolotl). Before being snapped in the palatial WFMU rooftop garden high over Montgomery Street (our palm tree addition has now given us a higher overall span than both the Kiss and Queen Latifah JC headquarters), we recorded two extended jams for download here. Thanks to Scott Williams for engineering. Photo Sami Sänpäkkilä.
Kemialliset Ystävät live at WFMU Part 1 (MP3)
Kemialliset Ystävät live at WFMU Part 2 (MP3) Video from WFMU below:
The mp3s in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States license
That vid is remarkable. On to the rest of the audio now...
Posted by: Grandpa Scorpion | June 17, 2008 at 08:31 PM
That video takes me back to the times when I was a teacher at a special needs school where the mentally handicapped students made a song like this -- albeit without the DigiTech pedals.
Posted by: mark | June 18, 2008 at 06:44 AM
"That video takes me back to the times when I was a teacher at a special needs school where the mentally handicapped students made a song like this -- albeit without the DigiTech pedals."
hahahahahahahaha... - it's the so called freak-folk
Posted by: marcus | June 18, 2008 at 11:18 AM