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UTON - Straight Edge XXS

Format: LP
Label & Cat.Number: Dekorder 025
Release Year: 2008
Note: lim. 500 / 2nd vinyl album from this project from Tampere, Finland
Price (incl. 19% VAT): €12.50
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Ekstatischer, anarchischer "Folk" aus den Untiefen finnischer Wälder, viele kurze Stücke, viel Geschrei, Getrampel und "primitive" Klänge, absolut weird & und von schamanistischer Energie durchzogen...


"Straight Edge XXS" is the 2nd vinyl album by Finland's Uton released in a strictly limited edition of 500 copies on the Dekorder label. It comes in a gorgeous full-colour collage sleeve assembled by Hirvonen himself.

While Uton's last Dekorder album "Alitaju Ylimina" (and most of his other recorded works respectively) are hazy lo-fi drone masterpieces for the most part, this is a completely diffferent affair. Recorded straight to tape within one month, right after returning from a 6-month trip to India, these songs (if you could call them songs) are completely out-of-this-world; very short and crazed sketch-like pieces sounding like a Nonesuch Explorer LP of long lost field recordings from an as yet unexplored continent. Or is it World Music from an unknown planet recorded by those Sublime Frequencies guys from mysterious short wave transmissions?

Well, it is all that and more. It is pure ecstatic expression channelized through Psychedelia, Free Jazz, Noise and rural ancient Folk Music from all over the world in a completely naked, predominantly acoustic setting. One of the purest forms of music you could imagine; while all the familiar Uton elements remain evident in a hazy backcloth.

Uton is the one-man project of Jani Hirvonen originally hailing from Tampere. Hirvonen is one of the most active musicians of the Finnish underground scene that has recently presented us the likes of Kuupuu, Kemialliset Ystävät, Islaja, Paavoharju and Lau Nau and a seemingly never-ending stream of beautiful and highly original record releases.

Uton has previously released dozens of CD's, CD-R's and Cassettes on a myriad of labels including Jewelled Antler, Pseudo Arcana, Last Visible Dog, Digitalis, Ruralfauna and his own Ikuisuus. He has collaborated with Amon Dude (Avarus), Anla Courtis (Reynols), Antony Milton (Black Boned Angel), Ben Reynolds, Peter Wright, Phil Todd (Ashtray Navigations) and Jan Anderzen (Tomutonttu, Kemialliset Ystävät) among others. The latter collaboration (under the Hevoset moniker) is released on LP by Dekorder simultaneously." [label info]


"Of all the freaky Finnish forest folk we hold so near and dear, Uton continue to be the most mysterious, musically for sure, but also, just in general, with far fewer releases than many of their countrymen, most of those releases containing little or no information, featuring bizarre abstract artwork, strange song titles, or no song titles at all, and a gorgeously twisted outsider music to match.
On this latest, bizarrely titled, lp only release, the first strange thing we noticed was the grooves on the record when we slid it from the sleeve, both sides had a whole bunch of super short tracks, almost like how a record of locked grooves appears, and indeed, Straight Edge XXS is a series of about 30 short tracks, but listening straight through it doesn't necessarily sound that way.
Fans of Uton need not fear, and Finnish music freeks will still feel right at home in Uton's warped and warbly avant folk free noise
sound world. Little bits of abstract percussion, scrapes and rattles and bits of crunch and buzz, fluttery flute, strange warped loops, hand drums and chimes, chanted vocals, mysterious invocations, the sound slipping from muddy and murky to glimmering and sun dappled,
extended stretches of woozy almost krautrock, fragmented bits of psych folk, haunting ritualistic invocations, layers of buzz and hiss, freaky falsetto crooning, fractured arrangements, all of these super short sonic mini landscapes, deftly woven into a super freaky, surprisingly cohesive, yet still distinctly and deliriously damaged whole. Amazing, super intricate collage cover, and of course LIMITED TO ONLY 500 COPIES!!!!" [Aquarius Records review]



www.dekorder.com