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Written in Folk Roots issue 180, 1998

WIMME
Gierran
Rockadillo ZENCD 2055 (1997)

Much more human, emphatic and bold than the first Wimme album, this. It leaps in on a fast joik, Wimme’s voice, Tapani Rinne’s bass clarinet groove and abrasive sample percussion, then the screen widens with whistle, sweeping electronic hissing, a slow natural-sounding drum pulse, and a reflective joik begins, entitled... Havana. Not my mental image of the place, but something in Wimme’s mind, or perhaps a cigar. A joik’s a personal thing, a meditation on a subject, not a graphic description. In fact, there are so many things a joik isn’t, few of them holding completely true, that it’s virtually impossible to say with any conviction exactly what it is, and that’s part of its magic - it’s elusive.
      While in some forms joiku uses words, many joiks have few if any; they may play with the sound of a word, repeating it, adding to it. That on the whole is Wimme’s style, both in his own joiks evolved within the sound of the instruments of the members of ambient techno band RinneRadio and in the traditional unaccompanied joiks which here make short punctuations. As Wimme says, a traditional joik is just one that someone has improvised, then sung enough times to remember it.
      While I’ve sometimes felt, both on the last album and live, that Wimme, a great joiker, in sailing his new joiks over the techno pulse wasn’t really stretching to what he’s capable of, I have to say that this is a much more varied, sensitive and involved album than its predecessor. He uses a wide range of vocal sounds, almost into overtone-singing, and there’s much more rhythmic variation. Sámi joiku is a form so far from most of the rest of the western musical tradition that it’s hard to make links without dragging it over the fence or losing its point entirely in a synthesised flotation tank. Whereas last time it seemed more as if keyboard textures were being offered up as ambient pads and Wimme’s voice was giving them character, what’s emerging here is a rightness. There are more real instruments in evidence, too, particularly Rinne’s unshowy woodwinds, and the samples don’t reek of technology - there’s a genuine musical meeting going on here, real mutual creation between voice and instruments. Oh, and leave it running; there’s a little joik in the tail.


© 1998 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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