The Otto Donner Treatment 1970, 1980

It's so sad when beautiful music is lost completely to history, especially when it is so well written that it could stand a chance to be enjoyed by ordinary folks today, who could appreciate this kind of thoughtful songwriting.


From discogs:

Henrik Otto Donner, Finnish musician, composer and arranger. 
Born on November 16, 1939 in Tampere, Finland, died on June 27, 2013 in Pietarsaari, Finland. 
In 1966 he founded Love Records with Christian Schwindt and Atte Blom. 
He had also worked as a chairman of the Finnish composers' copyright society Teosto.

For us of course he is most memorable for the gorgeous Strings album which he wrote, arranged and produced, with Aaltonen on saxes and flutes.  Remember when I mentioned their contribution to the Jazz Liisa, the tracks were simply new renditions of Strings tracks.  I think most of those artists appear in his group deemed the "Otto Donner Treatment" which made 2 official records separated by a decade.  It reminds me a lot of Esa Helasvuo's Think-Tank-Funk minus some of the free jazz and minus the funk (& that still leaves behind a ton of good and progressive ideas).

First track of 1970 simply blew me away with its at once delicate and progressive female chorus and very educated orchestral arrangement:





When you look at the CD release page, note that there are 2 female vocalists plus Jim Pembroke (from Wigwam of course) and another, as the males.  The pianist here btw is Eero Ojanen, who again I mentioned in connection with the Quartet KOM.

A decade later, the Otto Donner Treatment's 2nd album turns out to be composed entirely by our wonderful and beloved Jukka Linkola, whom I hope all of you remember with fondness.  (I recently reupped his two albums Protofunk and Lady in Green.)   It starts with a homage to Lady Day:





Would be so nice to know what she's saying about her (lyrics by Arto Melleri).  The singer's voice is so full and beautiful, and her name is Eija Ahvo.

And this lovely vocal album closes out with a lullaby-like song called Suuri Meri, simple in its chords (only G, E minor, and C) and structure but, in my opinion, deadly effective at tugging on the heartstrings:

Jukka Linkola Octet, Part 2: Lady in Green, from 1983

Four years after "Proto-funk" they came back with another record that charts more squarely in the big band style-- even more reminiscent of the German group Noctett, by this time, even in Finland, fusion was probably a dirty word...

But I would like to feature it because of the awesome track called "Hawai'i."  Surprisingly, it's not all about ukulele strumming, circles of fifths, and diatonic ditties with major chords a la Don Ho and Tiny Bubbles.  Like the "Seven Sacred Pools" of Joachim Kühn (footnote: the natives make a point of saying they are not sacred, this is an inappropriate misnomer like calling the White House a sacred temple) it's a serious composition that evokes the verdure, the clouds, the beautiful birds and the fresh rainshowers that appear so suddenly but depart so swiftly.  For those who have been there, this is a place that stays in the heart forever, as Joachim and Jukka probably realized.

The minute you step off the plane-- passing through the open-air Honolulu Airport with its mahogany walls and numerous palms, you will smell the unmistakable thick subtropical wind full of orchids, rainforest and warmth, a smell you will never forget for as long as you live.  In Hawai'i you will do the dutiful tourist activites-- seeing the volcano on the big island, the longest continuous erupting volcano in the world, drive through the lush rainforests and stare, slack-jawed, at the plummeting cliffs going down to the ocean on the 'road to Hana', trek through jungles to see brilliant huge waterfalls falling hundreds of feet down into cold fresh pools, watch the championship level surfers on the North Shore of Oahu and be awed by their skills-- which took years of daily practice to master, make no mistake about it (I've tried it, and it's really hard), taste the wonderful abundance of seafood and hopefully try the magnificent fish called Wahoo, the name supposedly derived from the island name of Oahu, which the natives there call Ono (meaning delicious), maybe you will see the mandatory-touristy luau and watch the dancers-- but this is just a superficial tasting...

It's only when you've spent a few weeks there, enjoying the friendliness of the locals and their universal 'hang loose' hand signal, finding completely empty white sand beaches with gorgeous waters, walking hours along rainforest trails, swimming in secret ponds at the foot of waterfalls, visiting enormous valleys in the central parts of certain islands, as majestic as the Grand Canyon, that you will understand, really understand... Hawai'i is a paradise on earth, as close as we will get to experiencing Eden.  Then when you return home to the boring daily job of 30-40 hours a week you use to waste time and buy food until you get old and retire, having to deal with angry coworkers, upset clients, insoluble problems you are required to fix, the horrid cold in our Northern Hemisphere, driving past the endless suburbs of home depots, Starbucks, and Burger Kings to drive home late at night with no forest anywhere nearby, you will miss Hawai'i-- I guarantee.  And the more you go there, the more deeply you will miss it...

How you'll yearn to go back, like Gaugain to Tahiti, or Rimbaud to Africa, to hear the sweet music, to smell those gorgeous orchids, walk through the forests with grand three-hundred foot wide monkey pod trees, grander than the cathedrals the Europeans spent hundreds of years building, sit on a rock at the bottom and pass hours just watching the forest in its element...

With regards to the sample song "Hawai'i" notice how the woodwinds-- as usual I should say-- evoke the clouds passing by, or a flock of birds flying away, with their turbulent, arpeggiated style.  As well, using the 'polytonality' of D on top of the key of C (the tritonal F sharp in fact) here makes one think of mists, showers, water, etc., due to the layering of one chord on top of the other, as if a reflection in a pool of water.  A very composed track for sure from the hand of this master:





One of the botanical gardens (the most beautiful one) on the Big Island, and the Aihualama Falls at the Lyon Arboretum north of Waikiki on Oahu:

Far past the road to Hana on Maui there is a beautiful but tiny white wooden church hidden in the jungle, without a sign to indicate its location.  There the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh has his grave, as he spent the last few years of his life in seclusion on this island.  Every time I have been there I've visited this site and thought of how much I would like also to be buried forever in this gorgeous place, surrounded by rainforest trees, a stone's throw from a steep cliff facing the Pacific Ocean and its interminable, incomparably powerful surf...
And goodbye to the land of wai (waters)...

Jukka Linkola Octet's Proto-Funk from 1979

I must repeat how lucky I am to have such friends spread widely over the world, who can introduce me to artists and recordings I would be utterly unfamiliar with were it not for them.  It's hard enough trying to find new material with a tiny self-imposed budget of about 300 dollars a month plus whatever paypal and ebay (those collusive thieves) deign to give me from vinyl sales, as we know, one record alone can use up my entire monthly GNP.  And then of course there are the undeniable needs of both young children and wives (of which I have only had one, actually, so far), who complain about the abuse of a household budget for the purpose of humoring a hobby that might as well be collecting battlestar galactica figurines or cabbage patch kids from the eighties in her terms of comprehension, for whenever I play something new to her I receive either one of two stock answers depending on the last one employed:
"Isn't that the same record you played me last week?"
or my personal favourite:
"Aren't you just buying the same record over and over again without realizing it?"
The fact that she doesn't remember repeating these same two sentences to me so many times should, of course, worry both of us, but rarely does, perhaps because the female tendency to repeat phrases is never really called into question within the household.  Good luck to the man who does attempt this feat.  But if the case were instead that my hobby consisted in buying new shoes (womens or mens) every week, this story would be entirely different…  So much so that this blog could actually have made me a millionaire as I review, like so many other stupid fashion blogs, what I've bought this week beside ads for the latest John Varvatos shoes and Paul Smith suits… rather than hunting for a record that fewer than a hundred people in a world of seven billion care about…

Back to the friends.  It's impossible to keep on top of what we are trying to do: resuscitate the lost musical treasures from the past decades of rock history, from all over the world, no country excepted, to assess what's worthy of preservation.  So I am eternally grateful that there are others to help me who will send material they find that is extraordinary and worth hearing.  This is a labor of love from beginning to end.  Also a labor of time, which I have in short supply, unlike the love for music, which I have in endless supply.  And um, love for my wife which is even more limitless.  Oh yes it's wonderful to share a home and a computer with her.  That there is a proviso-- not to share this music publicly, only to one's closest friends, does make it occasionally bittersweet, but I know that eventually the best music will make it out to the fresh air it deserves to breathe.

This particular record-- is just incredible, and it belongs to the friend who has already shared with us Carita Holmstrom, the astonishing progressive songwriter Petri Pettersson-- for me one of the greatest discoveries of the last two years-- and other Jukka Linkola albums including the magnificent ballet Banana which was posted on the old prognotfrog site-- and which I believe still is his masterpiece.  Amazing he created it when he was only 21!  TS tells me the link is still active there for those who are curious.

Here you will find some amazing fusion, chamber composition, intensity and energy, coming from the genius composer's hand.  The whole album uses an ancient Greek theme, although it's entirely instrumental, with such references as dithyrambos (a style of poem) and athmos (I remember from Univ. it means breath or soul, because it's the cognate of Indian or sanskrit atman and French 'ame', in fact, the English word breath probably derives from the first part of atman.  I read in a recent review article that there is still fierce disagreement, even though molecular genetics and new statistical analyses were hoping to clear up the issue, about who those Indo-Europeans were, who spread their language over all of Europe and half of Asia about 5000-8000 years ago.)

Notice in the discography he made two other albums with this lineup, one called "Lady in Green" in 1982 (which I haven't heard yet) and another called "Scat Suite" from 1983 which I have heard, and I can relate to you that it is far more jazzy and far less satisfying, as you'd expect, for by this time fusion was on the way out all over the world.

When you have a look at the man's biography and discography (sans octet), you can see he was quite prolific. The album he made in 1980 with Otto Donner is highly recommended for the progressive fan, being similar almost to a weaker Samla Mammas Manna album.  It's called "Kuinka Myöhään Valvoo Blues?"

As a sample track I will present to you the first, Proto-Funk, which is a perfect representative of the remainder.  Sit back, turn it up loud, and think of how happy and beautiful the musical world was back then-- 35 years in the past, half a lifetime ago, and thank my friend, who knew enough to introduce us to this lost album.




From the back, I will reproduce most of the blurb:

This album is long overdue.  Jukka Linkola Octet, the little big band of comtemporary jazz, has paid its dues.  The group received particular attention at the Pori Jazz Festival 1978, where the Octet played engagingly both by itself and together with several internationally established musicians in the heated jam-sessions of the festival.

And now here is the first album of the JLO, filled with fire and sensitivity seldom heard even in live appearances.  Just listen to the intense but controlled power of the opening selection PROTOFUNK, the misty awakening optimistic rise of MORNING SONG, and the variable rhythms and moods of the DITHYRAMBOS suite.

As a composer, Linkola has been compared to Chick Corea.  Though there are similarities, this music is pure Linkola consisting of material whose originator knows his musicians and their abilities perfectly.  Do I dare compare him to Duke Ellington?  Anyway Linkola sure knows how to use the innumerable possibilities of sound combinations offered by his multitalened reed and brassmen...
etc...

by Jaakko Tahkolahti

To be honest, comparisons to Duke or Chick are inappropriate, he is completely unique as a European composer.