PRE-ORDER - EXPECTED END OF APRIL
Since emerging into our lives in 2023 with the Kasveille ja eläimille LP, Finland's finest Juho Toivonen has rarely been out of it, consistently producing work, for his own label and several others, that probes at the overlapping outer-zones of ambient composition, improvisation, modern classical, drone, and layered field recordings. There's been much to keep up with, and yet, there's still seemingly more to give. Kuun Sininen Rinki takes on the responsibility of tidying the lost edges of Toivonen's output, bringing to vinyl four distinct pieces that although recorded over different periods of time, seem to beautifully capture as a whole his particular exploration of ambient-poetics. The A side comprises discarded work from the Kasveille ja eläimille sessions, and like that album, begins by positioning the piano at its centre. Toivonen isn't exactly a virtuoso player, and that is to his immense credit, performing ersatz Satie-styled pieces that intersect with decayed electronics and tape loop hiss that imagines new formations of Basinski and Leyland Kirby in its strange dissolutions of time and memory. Second track, 'Nuclear Boy Scout', might well be one of the best examples of this kind of approach in the Toivonen songbook, an utterly hypnotic swirl through frozen plains of time. These are all longform pieces, though Toivonen has a way of making time stand on its head, highly adept at pacing and spacing, as if to say I don't know where I'm going but I'll know when I get there. It's a journey you can take with the guy in complete faith. Not so much a rarities collection, as one of rare quality.
FFO: The Caretaker, William Basinski, Tim Hecker, Fennesz
