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Written in fRoots issue 239, 2003


PAULIINA LERCHE
Katrilli
Ruote Records RUOCD 102 (2002)

PETER LERCHE
Peshawar Diary
Ruote Records RUOCD 402 (2002)

Pauliina Lerche, from Rääkkylä in Finnish Karelia, was a member of that town’s major export, Värttinä, when they were still a big bunch of traditional-dressed kids and she was Pauliina Luukkanen.
      After the first two albums she left, forming Mimmit, in which her singing and playing of a big chromatic button accordion in Rääkkylä’s characteristic high-energy style marked her out as a name to watch. She’s still a member of Mimmit, as she is of the larger band Burlakat in which she sings and plays fiddle. In 1999, having moved to Helsinki to study at Sibelius Academy’s folk music department, she teamed up with and married guitarist Peter Lerche. Now we get an album from each of them, both produced by Peter in Finland and New Delhi.

      Pauliina’s, Katrilli, bringing in a varied team including Timo Väänänen, Peter's acoustic and electric guitars, and the Sabri Brothers, is likely to establish her as a significant figure in the ongoing expansion of Finnish roots music. Blending with the fast-paced Rääkkylä sound are more reflective pieces including a free bass accordion duet with Väänänen’s concert kantele, two tracks in which Sarathi Chatterjee takes the vocals, on one of them against driving keyboard programming. It finishes by returning to one of these New Delhi tracks, Katrilli Kintaan Kylästä, in an ambient remix blending Chatterjee’s vocal and the Sabris’ sarangi, tabla and tanpura with Pauliina’s 15-string kantele.

      If Pauliina’s album is varied, Peter’s is even more so. Finnish traditional music is the spine of hers, but his background is different, and includes a childhood as a Finn going to an American school in Pakistan.
      First Sargam begins Peshawar Diary with a powerful mix of Kamal Sabri’s wild electric-sounding sarangi, Lerche’s fuzzy electric guitar and Sarathi Chatterjee’s vocal over a rock rhythm section. Then a sudden lurch into smoky late-night jazz-blues, moody alto sax alternating with Lerche’s limpid semi-acoustic guitar lines. Onward through sultry bandoneon-led tango, concertina with almost slack-key guitar in a filmic theme, a reflective duet with Pauliina’s accordion in a wedding waltz, and a slow accordion-led traditional-style march over Esa Kotilainen’s pipey mellotron. In the title track guitar and sarangi match lines over tanpura, kantele and tabla. The final track, Toinen Sargam, is the same melody as the opener, with the same swampy groove, but the singing of Pauliina’s lyrics by ex-Hedningarna Tellu, and the tense drone from her moraharpa, moves it from India to Finland.


© 2003 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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fRoots - The feature and review-packed UK-based monthly world roots music magazine in which these reviews were published, and by whose permission they're reproduced here.

Kansanmusiikki-instituutti (Finland's national Folk Music Institute).

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