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Written in fRoots issue 366, Dec 2013

TERO HYVÄLUOMA
Junkyard Ball
Sibelius Academy / Lusti LustiCD009 (2013)

ESKO JÄRVELÄ EPIC MALE BAND
Esko Järvelä Epic Male Band
Sibelius Academy / EMB EMB001 (2013)

Two albums by fiddle-playing musicians that far transcend the ‘bunch of fiddle tunes’ approach to an album. Both are by players whose skill and risk-taking facility with their instrument comes from lifetimes – not yet long ones – in an environment where fiddling is as much the means of communication as talking, a living tradition of chucking around notes and tunes in ever more dazzling, creative and witty ways. These people hang out together and egg one another on. Yes, they come from the fiddling fleshpot of Finland’s Kaustinen (or in Tero Hyväluoma’s case the vanishingly small, semi-mythical hamlet of Patana a few kilometres to the south).
     There are so many alluring corners, such monstrous swing and cunning in Hyväluoma’s album that it’s taken a lot of listens to be able to give just an indication of what it’s like. A member of Frigg, Hot’n’Tot, Haaga Folk Machine and Snekka, on this first solo album his fiddling and tune-writing flips through but never apes stylistic associations - Kaustinen, Grappelli jazz-swing, classical, American, Quebecois, jazz-rock squee - switching to bouzouki for a stately partnering of Matias Tyni’s piano, which itself in the course of the album covers a lot of ground including jazz soloing. The core band, Frost V, is completed by Hari Kuusijärvi’s accordion, wild and Hammond-like when all the stops are out, double-bassist Vesa Ojaniemi, and drummer Niko Votkin, all given plenty of opportunity to express themselves in leads and solo breaks. They’re joined by Hyväluoma’s fellow Frigg fiddlers Esko Järvelä, Alina Järvelä and Tommi Asplund, viola, cello, Johanna Juhola on claviola and, fronting his splendid, complex arrangement of a traditional song, a trio of female singers.
     Esko is in pretty much everything coming out of Kaustinen, and a member of Tsuumi Sound System, Baltic Crossing, Kings of Polka and Tötterssön. Following his last solo project, the excellent ES&CO, he’s put together the Epic Male Band because “I realised I was already in my thirties, and I’d never played in a rock band. How lame is that? I wanted to play louder, I wanted a reason to buy earplugs, I wanted to break more bow-hairs than ever before”.
     It does indeed rock, an exuberant set of Esko’s characteristic intricately scampering, massively swung, ever-modulating tunes full of melodic corners and twists, he on fiddle, organ and harmonium, with the other Epic Males being Jani Kivelä and Anssi Salminen on electric and acoustic guitars, bassist Juho Kivivuori and drummer Janne Mathlin. Calum McCrimmon, of Scotland’s Breabach and his own impressive new rocky project Man’s Ruin, joins for half the tracks on low whistles or Highland bagpipes and takes a leading role atop the massed resources, including a female backing vocal trio, of the final, determinedly epic track, Epic Theme.

www.lustimusic.com 
www.epicmaleband.com



© 2013 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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