Make Lievonen (Fin, 1977)

This is the last gem I'll be posting here, I promise to all. It's a miraculously superlative album of all-instrumental progressive jazz-rock, like a cross between Moose Loose and Bo Hansson maybe, just the right mix of originality and accessibility-- the former to satisfy the jaded long-standing music listener's need for newness, the latter to get the right emotional kick. In the overall sound it is most like the Hiro Yanagida albums. This stuff just feels like a power outlet plugged directly into my soul, that could be used to power up streetlights from here to downtown, it can't but make you happy and wholesome. The greatness of this album is the way the composer has fit the music to the vignettes so perfectly.

"Rain Dance" is pure F major happiness, a key often used for this kind of nature composition (e.g. Beethoven's pastoral symph) perhaps due to the rain-like sound of the b flat - ? Again synaesthetes will have to help here. "Sea Horse" tries to get that ocean feeling going again with the inevitable fender rhodes sound. A really weird melody then plays out in saxes and ?clarinet. Quite inappropriately the sea horse starts getting all funky with a banged out bass line and bluesy saxes. Hey! let's ride that sea horse straight outta town man! Funk makes a reappearance later in "Tickets please" (to a disco full of cougars?) "Monster Rally" does a fantastic chord change of D minor, heavy synth riff, to a surprising Bflat chord-- sounding quite monstrous indeed. "March of the Lonely Riders" does a plaintive, mysterious A minor to Aflat major-- great change, melody goes A C F E -- Eflat D C D -- then C Aflat A-- suddenly a tritonal E flat based chord clashes in on top of the A -- oh that great and magnificent tritone, said to be the most dissonant interval, so essential to good progressive and the health of the cerebral cortex! Later a bridge does a bass going up by semitones with a sax melody winding around on top-- reminds me of Mingus' Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife but it may be just coincidence, so often musical similarities are just that. "Peace Street" is again F major happiness, rolling down like a happy bus of schoolchildren into fields of gold, I can't imagine a human being who can't feel happy listening here, except maybe myself, for whom happiness is always clouded by the realization of the ultimate fate of extinction for humankind (latest IPCC predictions for business as usual temperature rise, 6 degrees by end century). There is one throwaway song ("Etyk" ) which keeps to the same chord (C7?) through the whole track, 8 minutes of it, it may move out of it but I didn't have the patience not to fast forward through most of the track. It should be a crime to dwell on the same chord like that, no matter how interesting the jazzy riffs on top are. Album ends with a cute 'farewell' song, this really reminds me of the Moose Loose style with a lot of flutes and soft chord landings. As I said, it's like a kind of pictures at an exhibition album, with very visual representations of moods.
Please enjoy this last treasure posted.

Peace Street Two...