A little bit more than... few days at the weekend house

Summer holiday again. The same place. The same house. The unexplicable feelings which belong to here - from the past, and to-be thoughts in the future.

And music - of course - is still with me. Let me dive into a little kitchen philosophy...

In my childhood there were a few albums I listened to and when we spent our holiday at the weekend house, I felt the long, often three, four weeks long holiday shouldn't happen without my favourite music - so I brought my walkman and favourite cassettes with me. Later an older cassette player got to the house and my family always brought some cassettes to listen to. The feeling improved, louder music played and we could hear it while sitting on the terrace. Then years passed by and when the mp3 age started it was obvious that the walkman has to be replaced with the mp3 player. I took long walks with my little gadget and that feeling of free was really new and cool. The next step didn't make a big change, it was only the introduction of iPod in my life. More space, smaller player, and I love it. Hope Apple feels happy for this advertisement. And now, this year there's a notebook and mobile internet with us, so everything's accessible. This is the state of total freedom, which is really cool, but also...

What about the older feelings? Long, grey mornings in my teenager years in the autumn or winter when I listened to lp's from my father's collection. The hissing sound between tracks - from the lp player in the room, or from the walkman right in my ears. And no pc noise. When music comes from a furniture. Yes, a real pair of loudspeekers can be a part of the furniture of a room. And the cds? Cd shelves, of course. Another furniture, which, I think isn't ugly but cool. Posters on the wall, and not Windows backgrounds. Maybe now you're starting to feel this mood. I realize it every once in a while, and now I got my latest expereince here, of course in the weekend house. As CSN's Just a song before I go played by the cassette player. Sound quality? Who cares!? It's even better.

Few days at the weekend house... Kuupuu - Unilintu

"Where's the frontier between music and noise?" is an always coming-back question in my mind, and this album, Unilintu from 2007 by the Finnish Kuupuu is a good topic about it. It's something very new, very brave, and very experimental, which result is a meandering noise-mass with some sometimes-appearing music. And we can talk about rhythm, too, a special kind of rhythm, a rhythm made of sounds and vocal elements. From using natural sounds to distorted instruments, the whole atmosphere is unique. Kuupuu's strange and often dissonant vocals / childish singings are beautiful, and scary - at the same time.

I was in the weekend house the last two days, and in the night yesterday it was a perfect choice to upload myself spiritually. Because this album needs solitude and silence - and silence is an important word on the album, too, because the songs sometimes just crawl out from the silence. Listening to it the following thoughts came to my mind: Is this what we achieved in music? How can somebody make such extreme music? And, as the best song on the album, Myrskylaulu got to its end, I walked out to the terrace, then down in the garden, to look up and watch the early-autumn night sky, with the uncertain chill of it. Later, when Lohtulaulu started, with its mentioned scary dissonant voices, I need to go back inside the house, because the atmosphere was getting to be unpleasant. These voices seem to be coming from eternity, or beyond death, or maybe from the long, long past. Maybe it's a Finnish folk song or nursery rhyme, I don't know, but that's the best, when I don't know much about it, it's more exciting and unique. There's many more notable moments on the album, for example the song Mustaruhtinaan laulu which sound is very similar to some nose-trumpeters' sound, maybe it's that.

Chilly autumn nights in solitude? Try it.

Visit her on Myspace: www.myspace.com/kuupuu

Visit her official website: http://www.lurtta.com/

Lohtulaulu:

Few days at the weekend house... Just a song before I go

Weekend house. I think for all of those who spent their summers in a weekend house, it became a new expression, an other world, where the time isn't like in the city. For me, that house up on the hill above the lake-side city, Balatonalmádi is a real treasure and quite a big part of my brain, where my memories settle. It's a feeling which contains many little things: asking my father answerable and non-answerable questions about the sky, gardening with my grandfather, taking a trip to the mountain, sitting on the terrace as the night fall down, watching the summer night sky and the stars, the long, rainy days with the noise of the water pouring down from the eaves just next to my room outside, the childish fears caused by strange noises from the garden - most of these remained -, the camp fire and frying bacon, and the "Sounds of the night" which was a personal show created by me and my cousin, performed it to our parents but mostly for ourselves... just to pick the most important memories.



Few years ago, when none of our casette-players worked yet at home, we brought our casettes down to the weekend-house, where we can listen to it. One of these casettes is a Crosby, Stills & Nash compilation, made by my father many years ago. I hadn't known about this band before, but two years ago, when I first listened to it, it became one of my favourite casettes, and on every holiday it's a "must-hear" casette there.

Crosby, Stills & Nash (often called shortly as CSN) and later, when Neil Young joined the group, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY) was a rock/folk band, making most of their well-known songs in 1969 and the seventies. Their best albums are Crosby, Stills & Nash (1969), Déjà vu (1970), and CSN (1977).

Just a song before I go is a track from the album CSN, a short, slower song with a little melancholy. Written by Graham Nash, just in 15 minutes en route to an airport. It's my favourite, that mentioned casette starts with it. I remember listening to it in my room, lying on my bed, as the afternoon sunlight break its way into my room through the shades - "I had to be alone".

The original version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRP6GR35bQE
A live version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1Ji8HzTQl4

Album version: