PIIRPAUKE 2

Piirpauke's second album is the same sort of beast than its predecessor, despite not being a carbon copy either. Proposing eight shorter tracks (as opposed to five longer ones), the general musical mood also shifts to a jazzier feel, sometimes bordering on the gypsy-klezmer realm. Graced with a psych-folk artwork, the album features the same multi- instrumental line-up than its predecessor, and was released on the inevitable Finn label Love Records the following year (76).

Again, a good deal of the tracks are traditional folk music from around the planet, but their adaptation and rearrangements make Piirpauke's second album just as interesting as their first for adventurous progheads, because instruments like the Bouzouki, Egyptian violin, tambura, ethnic percussions, . Opening on the dronal Celtic Laulu and following on the Greek trad Sirtos, the album remains in the general artistic lines of the band. Fyssouni has a certain Spanish or flamenco slant crossed with a raga rhythm, but it's more in the klezmer realm. Plenty of instrumental interplay and a great alto sax solo to boot. The following band-written original Pazider Adeus is a pure jazz piece with plenty of tenor sax and electric guitar solo and is the perfect way to close the A-side.

On the flipside, we're transported in the Indian subcontinent with the short band-written Agjek, with ethnic flutes and percussions. Tambura are laying delicate dronal layers in Pealdoaivi, but the main attraction are the ethnic percussions and shrill flutes. The lengthy 11-mins two-parts Penang is definitely in the African sonic realm, and if I understand Finnish well enough, they have a few (unnamed) African musicians guesting. We're in the Niger River basin (Mali and Guinea) and it's rather fun to travel so far from your living room for so cheap, being carried away by the sonic waves emerging from your speakers. The middle section is more dissonant and tends to digress into Indian realm, but the closing part head into a fantastic 100-mph JR/F frenzy where Walli's electric guitar soars like an eagle over Kukko's electric piano and jazz-funk rhythm. The closing Imala Maika is apparently a Bulgarian piece, but it's not immediately obvious because it's got a general but undefined eastern European folk, but one can hear some western (read Celtic) flute solo.

In some ways, I tend to prefer the debut over their second, but it's rather clear that Piirpauke progressed, especially that the band wrote over half the music, and in doing so, also presented a lightly jazzier slant that's quite welcomed. If you're into Embryo, Archimedes Badkar and other bands playing "world music" avant-la-lettre (since the term would be coined with Peter Gabriel's Womad thing in the mid-80's), no doubt that Piirpauke's first few album will delight you, and I gather that the group's present (they're still together as a band) sonic realm remains fairly similar nowadays.