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Written in fRoots issue 364, Oct 2013

PEKKO KÄPPI
Rammat Jumalat
Helmi Levyt HELMI 064 (2013)

"Finland’s wild man of the jouhikko (bowed lyre), its rasping abrasion and plucking heavily processed, multiplied and fuzzed in insistent, dark swamp-blues grooves, his gnomic, Incredible-String-Band-paralleling vocals leading a massed chorus in a steamy, punky extension of the runo-song tradition. A grower."
     I wrote that while attempting to shoe-horn the review into ‘And the Rest’. But even as I was writing the album grew and jumped into focus, and it deserves a review standing alone and proud.
     Pekko Käppi is one of the most intense and innovative of Finland’s small band of jouhikko players, in the revival largely begun by maker and player Rauno Nieminen (with whom Käppi also plays in Jouhiorkesteri). He’s deeply into traditional song and exploring the husky, impure tones of the instrument’s rough-hewn curved-stick horsehair bow driven against three or four horsehair strings (the latter now being replaced for strength and tuneability by more modern substitutes), and has been developing along a very individual and path that will undoubtedly lead even further into the dark forest.
     What he’s doing here, now, on Rammat Jumalat (‘Lame Gods’) suddenly clicked for me at track 3, Käärmetyttö (‘Snake-Girl’): the natural affinity of the spirits of raw, moaning blues (think Blind Willie Johnson’s Dark Was The Night), Finnish runo-song (the traditional, limited-scale songs some of which Elias Lönnrot combined to make Finland’s national epic, Kalevala), and the almost preaching-gospel or tribal chant feel of the voices that surround his.
     As a taster, Käärmetyttö can be heard at www.soundcloud.com/helmi-levyt.

helmilevyt@gmail.com


© 2013 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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