The debut album from this Finnish musician.
Juha Kujanpaa is a musician who has done and still does extensive writing and music composing for theatres, TV and movies in Finland and perhaps abroad too. He also gigs with his Juha Kujanpaa Ensemble. I have seen some photos of the gigs.
Juha does the keyboards here and is helped out by many musicians on woodwinds, guitars, bass, drums, violins, banjo, flutes and vocals.
Most of this music is instrumental. And the music is pretty eclectic too......
Finland. Finland. Finland. A mysterious land up in the north. Far north. And that is reflected in this music. Music which sits somewhere between Scandinavian folk music, Scandinavian jazz, Scandinavian classical music and Scandinavian symphonic prog.
I am not sure if Juha is familiar with the likes of Kaipa and The Flower Kings. But I am and I can hear both bands is popping out of the speakers now and then. No, there is nothing wrong with my brand new speakers. And yes, they are of the best possible quality. But I still get a lot of Kaipa and The Flower Kings vibes here. The instrumental parts of this album is very much in their vein.
I am no big fan of instrumental albums and I had to pluck up a lot of courage to both listen to and review this album. A review loooong overdue. But this album really punches above it's weight and gives me back my belief in instrumental symphonic prog albums. I would not mind a follow up to this album.
This album is almost one hour long and it is a very good album indeed. And it does help that it has this great Scandinavian sound. Check it out on this Bandcamp link.
3.5 points
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