CD-r
If you saw Juho Toivonen tear up the room at Expected Music then you'll have some familiarity with the audio captured on this latest CD-r from the Finnish boywonder, another ten minute long live performance captured at a community centre in his home country in the autumn of last year. And if this is new territory for you, my, are you in for a treat. On record Toivonen presents as a distinctly avant-minded arranger with equal penchant for classicism and subversion. Live, he fully embraces that latter quality, and thrusts himself, physically as much as sonically, into performance - it's something he even acknowledges himself at the start of Yhteisötalon Äänite when he informs the crowd that his family's connection to sport had introduced him to the possibilities of the physical world. In his hands (and through his body!), it then becomes meta-physical, as he acosts the audience, plays prettified piano trills that seem half improvised and half divined, before exiting the stage to interact with those watching while whistling an inane tune. It is, in short, an expression of pure inspired charisma and radical thought. Where its value shifts again is in the coda - we're told that after Toivonen left the stage, an audience member then took his place and began to play piano themselves. Initial copies of Yhteisötalon Äänite also featured that spontaneous addition to the evening, though it has since been removed at the request of the copyright owner. In its place Toivonen has now inserted his own rendition of that music, an act that honours the original experience but also destabilizes our understandings of authenticity, performance and intent. As a conceptual exercise, it's near-flawless (even when the concept itself is unexpectedly disrupted by enforcement of intellectual property rights). More importantly however, as an experience it's a brilliant revelation. And with it, evidence that of all the new voices of the Scandi underground, Juho Toivonen might just be its brightest star.
