Description
300 x blue
Our authorised reissue of early Wigwam leader Gustavson’s 2nd solo work from 1979 (originally on Kerberos Records) comes with a facsimile of the original printed insert plus new liner notes by Mikael Wiik and also a fresh interview with Gustavson himself.
As Jukka’s work with Wigwam attests, his music was always complex and demanding – but, it more often than not incorporated a totally infectious groove. On his second album Valon vuoksi (-79) he moved even further away from his earlier influences. He had delved deeper, again developing chordal voicings totally his own while this time more or less eschewing the conventional construction of a composition into an intro, verse, chorus, bridge, hook and refrain. No biting riffs, no flashy solos over familiar chord patterns were heard. Like its predecessor this is again an instrumental outing. But compared to it, this is an even more challenging work. But for one very short track where you actually hear a drum set being played, the tempo throughout is marked rubato (“flexibility of tempo in performance”, according to the dictionary). Gustavson makes do without a rhythm section; instead he develops his themes in a manner that quirkily resembles a bubbling brook at first, then growing into a forceful river, finally flowing into the open sea. Fittingly, his theme this time is centered in the cycle of the seasons.
The Four Seasons is a topic that has attracted many classical composers, most notably perhaps Antonio Vivaldi and Joseph Haydn. Undaunted, Jukka Gustavson rises to this formidable challenge in a manner which the aforementioned never could have envisioned. Gustavson’s several keyboards are augmented by his unique voicings and arrangements for marimba, xylophone, percussion, oboe, viola, cello and alto flute. His attention to the alto range in the instrumentation is noteworthy. It colours the music and renders it a harmonious warmth that surrounds the listener like a blanket.
We are again served an evolutionary tale that begins with how God created Heaven and Earth, then adding human life made to cope with all the various conditions set by Nature. From this then emerges a pilgrimage through the seasons and all our walks of life. It takes us from winter to spring, onward to summer and autumn, finally turning into winter. The circle is closed, governed by the ever repeated changes of Mother Nature. Again all the themes conceived by Jukka Gustavson flow seamlessly into each other, from one development to another. Checking out individual tracks is pointless, what you have here is a compositional whole that needs to be listened to as just that, preferably uninterrupted.
Once again Gustavson has managed to create something so unique that it really isn’t comparable to anything else, be it classical music or progressive rock. Jukka Gustavson is a genre unto himself.
