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Written in fRoots issue 383, May 2015

ESKO JÄRVELÄ EPIC MALE BAND
Rye Groove
Epic Male Band EMB002 (2015)

Kaustinen music is its own tradition; whether the musicians from that cluster of villages in western Finland play acoustic or, as here, rock, the shapes of the tunes are unlike the music from anywhere else.
     Yes, it’s fiddle-centred, and they do listen to a whole lot of other music, including all the world’s other fiddle traditions, but what comes out, time and again, is really different in melodic shape, feel, chording and harmonisation from Irish, Scottish, American, and even other Nordic music, and, while embracing it, in the last two or three decades it has evolved far beyond the Ostrobothnian wedding-band music of earlier Kaustinen generations.
     Esko is a well-known and hyper-active scion of the extensively musical family Järvelä, member of many bands including Frigg, Tsuumi Sound System and Baltic Crossing. Joined by guitarists Anssi Salminen and Jani Kivelä and the bass and drums of Juho Kivivuori and Janna Mathlin, the Epic Male Band is his dream rock band, self-described as “progressive hard folk”.
     This, their second CD, is high-energy fun, much epic power-chording fuzz of guitars, motoring of bass and crashing of drums, but, no brute blunt instrument, it’s full of musicality and dynamics, Esko’s five-string fiddle winding and twining long, intricate lines through the exuberant, cathartic melée.
     All the tunes are by Esko, except the choppy Kaustinen/Tötterssön-style lad-song Sheriff by fellow Kaustinen-fiddle-explorer Ville Kangas and Jussi Petäjä. The other vocal interjection is some up-to-falsetto wailing by Esko and Anssi in Five A.M. (a time of the morning these irrepressible sessioneers know well).

     www.epicmaleband.com


© 2015 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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