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Written in fRoots issue 361, July 2013

TSUUMI SOUND SYSTEM
Floating Letters
Tsuumi Sound System TSS003 (2013)

Finland’s Tsuumi Sound System showcased at last year’s Womex in Thessaloniki, but perhaps didn’t create the waves they might have, partly perhaps because of a mix that in trying to keep within civic-imposed peak-volume restrictions squashed the twin fiddles too deep in the big eight-piece sound, but probably mainly because the words ‘sound system’ made many delegates assume it was, well, a sound system, not a band. The name comes from the fact that TSS began as the band for folk-dance-rooted Helsinki dance ensemble Tsuumi. Its first album was still linked to the ensemble and under that name, but this, produced by Väsen’s Roger Tallroth, is the third since they branched off as an independent unit.
     The first four tracks, while impressively pacey and big, are very notey and tend to wall-of-dense: everything playing at once in complex, winding melodies with a sensation of compression restraining what might reach out and grab. A brief oasis of Bach-like piano opening track five, Twisted Invention, morphs via parallel-harmony fiddles and darabukka into jazzy saxy blowing. The slow, liquid piano, guitar and bowed bass of Minka’s Dream by the band’s founder and accordionist Hannu Kella comes as a serene breather, as does the mid-tempo melody that follows it, Smilla, by pianist and harmoniumist Pilvi Järvelä, though even that builds and crescendos. Then, as the ear attunes and is drawn into the sound, it’s into the rather splendid fiddle-frenzy of her husband Esko’s Altitude, in the characteristic Kaustinen-Järvelä style of his and co-fiddler Tommi Asplund’s other band, Frigg. And onward to the big swing of saxist Joakim Berghäll’s Silmäkkeessä.
     In some ways - just to give an approximate overall impression, and though they’ll probably not thank me for saying it - Tsuumi SS is a sort of heavy Frigg. There are non-Kaustinen compositional approaches from Kella, Berghäll, guitarist Jani Kivelä and drummer Jussi Nikula, but there’s a strong input of the driven-bow twists, lurches and turns of Kaustinen’s new-wave, JPP-inspired, fiddles, harmonium and bass music.
     The simplest, track is the closer Dansk Fest which, paradoxically, despite being by drummer Nikula is a delicate, hesitating, reflective melody with almost no percussion.
     TSS will be in London at the beginning of November to play LIFEM festival; a recommended gig.

www.tsuumisoundsystem.com


© 2013 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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