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:

The Nordic Jazz Quintet, 1975

The band was mentioned in connection with our Pop Liisa / Jazz Liisa expedition.  This quintet made one legit LP in 1975 with 3 long tracks, and I won't repeat my lack of patience with those.  Note that the band did include the famed guitarist Jukka Tolonen who appeared in a few of the Pop Liisa / Jazz Liisas, and the quintet as well in the same year recorded for that radio series.  He's rounded out here by bassist Kjell Jansson, percussionist Petur Östlund, flute and sax player Knut Riisnæs and pianist Ole Kock Hansen.

In fact, the long track on side a was played at least partly on the jazz liisa a side of things too.  Here on the official 1975 released LP, the "Nordjazz Suite" includes only a few minutes of composed music, three at the beginning and three more at the end, with the remainder a long and boring series of improvisations, so if they are attempting to represent Scandinavia as boring, they've got me convinced.  Specifically, there's a wonderful fusionary flute intro with ascending electric piano chords followed by some quick improvs, then, as if they were too excited to get back to noodling, or too stoned to realize they had to play a song, there are more and more drawn out improvs with bass for 4 minutes, a wailing sax for 4 more, a meanderingly aimless guitar like a drunkard's walk for another 4 and then the absolute abysmal torture of a several minute long percussion-only solo including a bunch of irritating grade-school triangles I wish I could have torn from his hands.  Finally then an acoustic piano returns to save the day to close out the song with a more tender ballad.   And that's the first side.

The other two tracks were written by Tolonen and are altogether not too bad, I'll sample you the track called Hysterical by him:

Esa Helasvuo almost compleat, with a rip of his 1985 previously unavailable Huomenna Sinä Tulet

A quick review of this Finnish musician/pianist I was reminded of, obviously, when going through Jazz-Liisa.  From discogs:

Born on March 9, 1945. A Finnish composer, arranger , pianist and lecturer.

Clearly his masterpiece was Think-Tank-Funk, a wonderful and poetic name simultaneously describing the intellectual quality of this music and satirizing those real-world intellectual exercises in futility, who I blame for almost tipping humanity into the hell of nuclear war thanks to their 'logical' appraisals of how a conflict against the USSR could be won by the US at the negligible cost of destroying human civilization (and their appraisals turned out to be mostly wrong, based on a form of game theory that was superseded by more sophisticated versions, a good example of how bad science is worse than no science at all).  Today the think tanks have found a wonderful new raison d'etre: to rationalize the crazed social experiments of politicians all over the world who want to validate their intuition that rich people ought to get richer, to hell with everything else ("burn baby burn").

Anyways I would expect almost anyone reading this to be familiar with the album.  The astonishing vocal track, Song for a Tube, a premonition/prediction of the rise of youtube from those wonderful think-tanks:





Moving through the discography, the next album from 1973 is clearly a children's album, no interest on my part in buying and ripping, while the 1976 ripped some years ago for our benefit by Mr. Morgan is an odd mix of vocal jazz, classical chamber, children's songs and simplistic pieces, the best ex. is this:





The 1974 is a solo piano album which is all over the place, and to me just impossible to like.  I can't for the life of me understand what happened to the brilliance of Think-Tank-Funk.  The best aspect of it is the cover painting, which is really gorgeous and worth looking at up close (you can see a good scan on discogs).  The 1977 Q is well known and deservedly famous, in fact, in its pure expression of the cool style of Finnish contemporary jazz.

Then of course we jump to today's entry, the 1985 vocal jazz album.  We see this repeatedly where a muscular progressive seventies spirit like in the 3 Edition Speciale LPs is neutered once we enter the 80s (Orchestra II).  Susanna was a Finnish actress who also made some vocal albums in the early 80s.
Overall, this sounds very much like the prior Ahlenvahti vocal LP I posted last month, relatively humdrum, no instrumentals, nothing fusiony.  All the compositions are by Esa.  Note that the other brilliant Esa, Kotilainen, appears here too, credited on the accordeon (!).  His Ajatuslapsi is one of my all-time favourite keyboard albums, and note that a CD release appeared recently with bonus tracks.  The last track has lyrics from an Edgar Allen Poe poem and the chords are correspondingly mysterious:





For a more positive experience, the first track has a relatively sweet buoyant sound to it; cowritten by the two principals:





Our wonderful friend also made a new lossless rip off a VG plus vinyl Q which I'll post below.

Olli Ahvenlahti, in 1981 with Based on a Novel, plus the others

This pianist who I mentioned in connection with Jazz-Liisa is well known for his mid-70s ECM-like fusion albums The Poet (1976) and Bandstand (1975), but this 1981 release I felt was his best with its interesting depth and the wide range of its emotions and it's much less known.  So here it is.

From discogs:

Born 6 August 1949, Olli Ahvenlahti, a pianist, composer, and conductor, has been one of the leading Finnish Jazz artists since the 70s. He has recorded with several artists and groups, like UMO Jazz Orchestra.

Actually he also appeared in Unisono, Jukka Hauru and Superkings (remember?), Mircea Stan Quintet (from the Jazz-Liisa collection), and The Group, the famous Pekka Pohjola project.  (Hey I forgot about Pohjola, the best of all Finnish composers, in connection with the Pop-Liisa / Jazz-Liisa.)

The sweet composition of Chorale:





And the phenomenal title track:





Note the expressiveness of the theme played on bass flute (by our beloved Aaltonen!).  A beautiful novel indeed, dark and tragic but full of heart.

Finally, the next album after this one is a vocal slightly pop inflected album with presumably lyrics by the great writer and Nobel prizewinner (along with Bob Dylan) Hermann Hesse.  I include it for 'completeness' sake.

More from the KOM group (i.e. Kom-Teatteri) from 1973 to 1979

I spoke too soon when I said there was no more from the Kom Quartet.  Lucky for all of us.

Kom was / is a theatre in Helsinki, apparently still open to this day.  Amazingly, our beloved maniac Jukka Hauru performed on some of these records (specifically, the 74, 75 & 77) and for this reason alone they are supremely interesting.  Recall Eero Ojanen, the other part of the Kom Quartet on Jazz-Liisa-- he was involved as composer in residence (among others) during this period.  Here in this post we have the 1973 Torpedo, then 1974, 1975, 1977 (with Agit Prop) and 1979 albums from them.  (For reference, the Jazz-Liisa recording was made in 1975).

The first album I have for you from 1973 called Torpedo is a silly mix of chanted tangos and political folk in the usual simplistic tradition of these compositions here written mostly by one Kaj Chydenius, thank god this genre died an early death (except of course in Germany).  I can only imagine what infantile drivel they are singing about-- and I certainly can't fathom why tangos would be an appropriate vehicle for political commentary.  Too bad the cops didn't shut down the theatre at that time, for inciting revolution with excessive mediocrity.  However, you instantly notice the compositions by Eero Ojanen as they shine through with a very clear and gentle light, unfortunately there are only 2 of those.  Still, they are not even good enough to show internet archive as samples.

The 1974 album continues on with the Brechtian tangos and political chants but augmented with the curious and herein puzzling addition of Jukka Hauru, with Eero on the piano and augmented as well with a lot of spoken passages and 'comedy' bits-- lucky audience!  From discogs:

A (theatrical) tribute to the Chilean folk singer Victor Jara, murdered by the military forces at Chile Stadium, Santiago on September 16, 1973 during the violent aftermath of a coup d'etat. 
Song B4 is partially based on Victor Jara's song Plegaria a un labrador [Finnish: Maamiehen rukous]. All the songs are included in Matti Rossi's published collection of poems "Soi kivinen lanka."

So in this case, I should take back what I declared earlier, perhaps the words are worth listening to.  Luckily, I don't understand Finnish.  Musically though we can't help but be disappointed if we are here occupying ourselves 99% with a progressive music blog so again there is virtually nothing to sample out for you and the internet archive.  As an aside, I recommend reading about the subject of the dictatorship of Pinochet (helped into power by the Nixon administration) in those awful days in Chile as an instructive example of a classic authoritarian government, its tragic history including the suffering of its people, and its disastrous economic consequences-- for the citizens that is, not the people in power.  They always do very well financially.

Finally in 1975 Jukka Hauru comes to the fore in the mix and is given compositional rights, whilst his friend Eero Ojanen pulls out an electric, not acoustic piano.  Here just like with the Jazz-Liisa Kom Quartet, every track can be sampled for you so I'll just play track 1 wherein from the first delectable Jukka guitar lick you know you're in for something special:





It's more than a little shocking to me that such a well-known progressive fusioneer should have unknown music sitting out there, unknown until now, until this very day, for the vast majority of us fans.  This is slightly tempered by the fact that half the album, or three of the songs appear (though in significantly different forms) on the Jazz-Liisa.

Moving on to 1977's LP the Kom assembly joins forces with political puppets Agit Prop (who I have always hated) but they continue beautifully with the fusion sounds, it's not clear to me whether or not Jukka is on this one but it sure sounds like he is.  Maybe someone can tell us who has compositional credits.  It's phenomenal from start to finish, it cohesively unites as a whole work / electric symphony or chorale of fusion augmented with the vocals on every track and I expect to spend hours enjoying it to the total dismay of my wife and kids:





Well, my usual comments apply, why is this work not performed at the local symphony halls all over N. America or Europe instead of the same tired old canon of ancient European composers?  And every time I make the mistake of attending one of those concerts and look around I'm dismayed by the fact that in 20 years their audience will all be dead.  I'm reminded of that time I saw a 75 year old man at intermission open a bunch of those tiny half ounce 2% milk containers for pouring into coffee and drink them one after the other, so happy he got a free room temperature cup of milk, as bystanders laughed and stared, completely oblivious to the theatricality of his own senile idiocy. So to me that's a classic classical music fan.

Finally by 1979 Jukka is out, kicked out presumably for being too musically brilliant, and the simplicity of Chydenius and his dumb tangos is back in.  There are even cover versions of Brecht-Weill songs (from the tired old threepenny opera!!)--  they couldn't come up with enough compositions to fill up an album.  We have a complete reversion or rather relapse back into the unintelligent political rock style in its most childish form, as if fusion had never happened.  A metaphor for the whole of human existence surely, the rise and fall of all human activities, a curve that we are set to follow as a whole, as a species, in all inevitability.


But at least we have two brilliant masterpieces more to explore, thanks to this crazy guy:

The Pop-Liisa / Jazz-Liisa series Part 2 [limited time only]

First of all I would really need to apologize for the record cover just above... surely one of the worst ever considering the contents, but a good representation of the sickening stupidity that descended on the cultural world in the 80s.

The Jazz-Liisa (discogs summary) side of things might be a little less enjoyable to me due to the overabundance of free jazz, which I don't mind in small doses, but can't stand when it inflates to occupy two thirds of an hour of my limited time. So for me polyawful Unisono Quartet, whose 1975 album I detested (1), ethnic 'migrant invasion' Piirpauke (15), ramblin' Aaltonen (17), never-ending Vesala (18)-- these are artists others love but I hate, and I'll give 'em some Trumpian nicknames for the hell of it.

Interestingly, Otto Donner (10) plays his songs from the famous and much-loved and requested Strings album I posted here two years ago, and Jukka Linkola (6) plays tracks from his first album I also put here, long ago, in fact 4 and a half years back.  Believe it or not, that Strings post is one of the most popular ever for this blog, with literally thousands of page views. It's a beautiful, beautiful work.

Now I'll discuss the rest, which are a mixed bag.
The 2 presents a band I never heard of, but they are surely interesting, they never appeared anywhere else (the name is annoying and has too many vowels).  Jukka Tolonen is back in round 3 with long, very rambling, and to me boring very-mild-maniac fusion tracks.

KOM quartet (4) is to me the big highlight of this series, along with 5's Jupu Group who with Jukka Hauru were the masters of Finnish progressive fusion.  In fact, the KOM quartet you will notice included Jukka Hauru.  (Whilst Jupu had Jukka Linkola.)  Evidently he had a golden touch, like German Wolfgang Dauner.  He shares compositional credits with a Finnish composer called Eero Ojanen (side b), which gives the whole a classical vibe, in fact, operatic vocals are featured on some of the tracks, making it sound a bit like for ex. the Gerardo Batiz album Arlequin.
One of side a (J. Hauru)'s tracks:





No. 7 (Oton Kvartetti / Wasama-Tuominen Trio) is acoustic material that suffers from being over long, a common sickness in jazz, presumably infectious.  No. 8 features Wasama Quartet on the second side, a band that made some great folky fusion with ethnic components like so many other bands I've posted here (e.g. Membrillar from Arg., East River Consort from US), and a duo of pianist and cellist who play just a gorgeously graceful set of compositions:





It doesn't get any more emotional and beautiful than that. Sadly they never released a full LP.
For Wasama, their second album called Dirty Date with the awful cover above, surprisingly, has progressive fusion in the later German style so I thought it was well worth hearing (not seeing).

No. 9 is Mike Koskinen, which is passably good but a bit too much into big band territory (unlike his 1976 well-known album Sunwebs) same with 16, Pori Big Band.  Pentti Lahti Band and Ahvenlahti on 11 are way too extemporaneous.  I mean, the point is the remainder have one or two good songs but generally they are much weaker than the pop series.  When Aaltonen does show up, on 17, even he shows up only to disappoint me. 

The only other relatively good release is the 14, the Nordic Jazz Quintet (Tolonen on guitar!), whose 1975 LP with 3 long tracks is really quite good.  I should've posted that in this blog too, like so much else good, because it's worth hearing. Two of the tracks on this Jazz-Liisa which was recorded in the same year are new and also interesting, albeit suffering of course from too much wankery.

Thanks to all those friends who helped me amass these treasures!!

I Recommend:
Taivaantemppeli (2)
KOM (4)
Jupu Group (5)
Wasama (8)
Nordjazz (14).

The Pop-Liisa / Jazz-Liisa series Part 1 [lmited time only]

I find myself in a similar sort of situation to when the friends discovered the riches of Evergreen College or more recently in the anthropocene when the commenter 1st pointed out all those many Mini Jazz Klubs, with a plethora of unheard-of master musical gems.  Here we have 18 albums in each series (thus total 36, each 35-40 minutes long-- feel sorry for my wife, or rather, your wives out there--  that's a total of approx. 24 hours) with all the famous names of Finnish prog music (except Pepe Paradise, I notice)-- playing mostly unreleased songs in a live-in-studio format.  Oddly enough the producers or label don't have a general purpose explanatory page.

So we have many artists who already appeared in these pages before, such as Matti Jarvinen, Kalevala, Helasvuo, Jukka Tolonen, and all those who are so famous they don't need to make an appearance on this blog like Elonkorjuu, Tabula Rasa, Tasavallan P., and superstars Wigwam (still the best of 'em all), even boreal fusionmasters Finnforest turn up with my favourite track Odd Tale which was on their 1980 Jargon LP.  An incredibly beautiful composition.

So what I'm going to do is mention some artists we would never have known of were it not for this fabulous series, and review each numbered installment so you know what to look for and what to studiously avoid, because there are dozens of ordinary pop, rock, or free jazz trash tracks in there as well.  It can't be all veins of gold in this ol' mine.

First the straight-ass intro regarding this series, from bandcamp (you can buy almost all of these online):

Pop-Liisa & Jazz-Liisa Sessions, Helsinki, Finland 

The Pop-Liisa and Jazz-Liisa broadcast session series presents previously unreleased and forgotten gems from the biggest names of Finnish prog and jazz of the 1970’s.  Never bootlegged and known up until now only to a few faithful servants (and largely thought to have been lost for ever), these sessions offer a hitherto unrivalled look into the state of Finnish jazz and progressive rock between the years 1972-1977. Imagine if the sessions recorded by John Peel had only recently been discovered, and you get an idea of the cultural weight of what is being brought into the light of day here.  Originally recorded as broadcasts by YLE (the national radio service Yleisradio, (”the Finnish BBC”), the thirty-four Liisankatu sessions are a genuine who’s who of Finnish prog and jazz. Interestingly, anyone with even basic knowledge of the era’s biggest bands will recognize familiar names at play within these obscure bands.  As such, these sessions provide the missing link between jazz and prog, explaining through spirited performances – and largely unknown collaborations – the instrumental prowess and dexterity of these players and bands. What’s best, these sessions show these exceptional bands playing for the moment in front of a hundred strong studio audience, not weighed down by the tedium of studio recording, and thus somehow miraculously managing to capture the best of both worlds: studio performances in front of a live audience. 


Now let's check out the Pop-Liisa (discogs summary link).  The first begins badly enough with two long psychy dronemaster tracks from the unpresidential Tasavallan, which I detest, though I understand others adore.  Especially when they are compelled, for some unknown reason, to stay in the same key, which is usually E because it's easiest on the guitar, for the entire 25 minute long track.

But instantly we pick things up off the floor with Jukka Hauru in no.2, one of the true masters of Finnish prog, everyone should know his two LPs.  If you don't you shouldn't be reading this, you need to go to an 'intro to prog' blog instead.  Now I haven't listened to those two recently but so far as I can tell, Mai-Ling is nonoriginal and a bit silly but the other 3 tracks are previously unheard.  Or if I did hear them, I don't remember them at all.  So Pop-Liisa 2 is strongly recommended.  (Note his backing band "Superkings" includes pianist Ahvenlahti, who I will get to later.)

On the other hand I can't say the same for no. 3 which presents Wigwam playing some of their most well-known tracks, nothing original here.  If you're looking for excellent old non-LP Wigwam, I suggest the unreleased "Fresh Garbage" collection which is amazing.  Personally I've listened to enough Wigwam that I don't want to hear the album songs anymore.  Pop-Liisa 4 presents a band with Sami Hurmerinta, who made a stunning ST 1978 advanced fusion album I strongly recommend.  I thought I posted it here but I didn't, perhaps I should.  Along with Matti Jarvinen. In this installment he plays in a band called Taivaanvuohi which never released an album, sadly, as their compositions are very strong, a mix of Wigwam and Kalevala I'd say, less progressive than the former in their heyday of course.

Jukka Hauru then reappears on number 5, with a side-long track called Gunther Angst, sorry for the title but this is a miracle of happiness for us.  To tell me that you will give me a Hauru composition I never heard before, in his typical insane-asylum progressive high-dynamic style we know so well, is heaven, Xmas time come early.  Thank you, God.  This album though is rounded out with two ho-hum fusion tracks from Nono Soderberg, who I thought I posted before but again I guess I didn't.  (Can't believe how much I failed to post in all these years.) He made two pretty good instr fusion albums, the best the first one of course, but here it's all very disappointing.

We're only at Pop-Liisa 6, so I will save the Jazz ones for next post.  No. 6 features fusionmasters Finnforest with the aforementioned Odd Tale track and an unreleased. So, unreleased Finnforest? OK kids its Christmastime for sure now.  Please get me some eggnog stat.  Don't bother pouring it from that carton.  And shut off the idiotic carols right now.  Unfortunately the creators paired this up with Elonkorjuu which is a bit disappointing to me: I mean in their best moods they were as proggy as anyone, but that wasn't meant to be on this outing.

Now we get into a string of huge ones, followed by a string of very disappointing editions.  Kalevala (7) is one of the strongest here, overall, because every track so far as I know is unreleased.  Recall they made a 1972 prog-rock masterpiece called No Names, followed by a more straight-rock Boogie album, and then they posted their 1978 Abraham album on this very blog long long ago, wherein they returned to a hard-prog style.  Amazingly, as I said, the 1973 pop-liisa has songs that are not just non-LP, but incredibly good.  So strange they didn't include them on an album at the time.  Had they given up on prog, is that the reason??

Check out the intro of the first song:




(Finnish, not German) Nimbus is a band some might know, they made a fantastic dark prog-rock album called Obus in 1974, and this Pop-Liisa has some unreleased & some well-known tracks (e.g. pessimistic dialogue) from them.  Strong recommendation.  Jukka Tolonen, well-known guitarist, is next, I mentioned him here and there in these pages but his albums are easy to acquire.  Unfortunately I think his tracks are all previously heard compositions.

Pop-Liisa 10, with the Hurmerinta-Sorvali big band, is disappointing, as you'd expect, and the series hits its nadir with a straight rock band full of cover versions called Alwari Tuohitorvi (11) which in my opinion deserves to be utterly forgotten, put it back into those vaults guys, and the singer Kirka and the Islanders backing group, equally dreadful (12).  Avoid those, as well as the Hassi Walli (16), Petri Pettersson (17) and Donna + Tabula Rasa (18).

This leaves a few more.  On no. 13 we have Matti Jarvinen (he made a great proggy pop album called Matin Levy which I didn't post here) and Cascade.  The latter is a straight soul pop group I have never heard before, who made one album with cover songs in this period.  They perform a wonderful version of Stevie's Perfect Angel song which he wrote (if you recall) for "Lovin' You" Minnie Riperton's 1974 LP.  I'll post their LP down below as I enjoyed it, despite the cover version of Beatles' Because which should be criminally outlawed (to copy I mean).




14 is Mike Westhues which I enjoyed--slightly.  It's a rare bit of folk for this series.  15 is a band called Orfeus, which I was completely unaware of heretofore and probably will be in the future too.  Unclear to me whether their released LPs are worth pursuing, probably not.  (They did make some of those.)

A bit much for one post, so I'll do the Jazz next time.

In summary, I recommend:
Jukka Hauru (2, 5)
Taivaenvuhi (4)
Finnforest (6) only for the unreleased track
Kalevala (7)
Nimbus (8)
Cascade (13)