Islaja - Blaze Mountain Recordings

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4...according to our Phil on Wed 19 Mar, 2008.

Islaja has a new release out on that giant of a man's label (I'm talking Thurston Moore here) Ecstatic Peace. After a couple of albums she's shifted continent. I'm still incontinent but that's by the by. Here she is all all of her psych glory creating what sounds like a very old record. In fact listening to this now I wouldn't have known it was a new record but I'm in the fortunate position of having the thing in my hands and I can see it is a new record. She's an exotic beast almost coming across like a more feral Liz Fraser whilst Mary Hopkins is lost in some forest tripping her tits off on fun mushrooms. Somewhere along those lines anyway. Excellent stuff anyway... I do like a bit of Islaja I do.

ISLAJA is Merja Kokkonen, a visual artist and musician from Helsinki, Finland. She’s been releasing records on Finnish label Fonal since 2004. The first one, Meritie, introduced her lovely sense of musical wonder to the world and garnered excited praise from the more astute ears at The Wire (UK) and Dusted Magazine (USA). The 2nd release Palaa Aurinkoon was equally boss and brought ISLAJA to North America with compatriot Finnish folk experimentalists Lau Nau and Kuupuu where she mesmerized audiences with a captivating minimalism of sweet singing and small toy and hand-made instruments played by herself and companion Jukka Raisanen. In 2007 she released her third album Ulual yyy which expanded her sound into further psychedelic paths. Since then ISLAJA has played numerous large festivals including Eurosonic, Sonar and the 2006 All Tomorrows Parties/Nightmare Before Christmas curated by Thurston Moore. Animal Collective invited ISLAJA to play a two week support tour with them in Europe. Blaze Mountain Recordings is a live document, all music and words by Merja and played by Merja and Jukka.

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