LUCID DREAMS

Exactly this album is a psychedelic picture freely and flexibly drawn under Pasi's altered state of mind, and terrific psychedelic artwork upon the sleeve produced by Eetu Pellonpää must upregulate Pasi's work much more.

Anyway, what a magnificent kaleidoscopic space in Pasi's flexible brain is. This psychedelia might be drawn and created just as Pasi's eyes, nose, ears, skin, and undefined sensory nerves could feel, and just as Pasi's mouth, vocal codes, hands, feet, and unexplainable sound launchers could shoot, I imagine.

Guess he has got much influenced by various music scenes and artistic incarnations - especially Oriental culture (by the way, people in the North Europe may be familiar with Oriental cultural effects - feel synchronicity between them and us, at least for me). Very trenchant ethnic sandstorm blows our brain away in the sixth track "Drops In The Ocean", even with very soft and smooth percussive rhythms and beautiful synthesizer cosmic moments. On the contrary, we can touch a risky, eccentric colour in some cold, chilling sound spreaders like "Mushroom Dance".

Pasi's play and sound structure cannot be felt exquisite but very rough and straightforward - may not be perfect as for his playing skill, but who cares? He visually and musically exerts his state of mind, with some confusions and unexpected incidents. The first track "Infant Galaxy" has a tremendous groove, just like his non-concrete pleasure under the sky, glittering space (I consider he could show obviously this atmosphere with such a fuzzy, rough technique). And listen, the title track has a hearty star crystallized by his electric piano solo and floating synthesizer flowers upon the backyard - lovely one indeed.

The last one "Heavy Butterflies" can be mentioned as Pasi's psychedelia itself methinks. Under uncontrollable synthesizer noises with definite rampancy, his heavy keyboard flapping of butterfly wings goes ahead against such an adverse circumstances. The 20 minute tune is a bit tough for me, but simultaneously can let me know what and how Pasi considers and plays forward. Yes, with this longest stuff we can analyze Pasi KOIVU Psychedelic Eye and the unexplainable dreamy world. Apparent difficulty we can feel, use our brain power for, and finally grab something - upon his long road to psychedelia.

Lastly, please let me say that another psychedelia artwork upon this sleeve was created by Eetu my friend. I can see psychedelic upliftment, upregulation among their collaboration.

I'm not really in favour of one-man home projects where a self-appointed composer mixes his preferred sounds with a synthesizer. The output often runs into danger to sound single-tracked so that you consequently will lose interest sooner or later. When it comes to Pasi Koivu from Finland it's certainly different. He's under way with the moniker Psychedelic Eye, since 2011 at least, and draws on unlimited resources related to the history of progressive rock music, picks up influences from here and there and forms something new based on an experimental, partially bombast keyboard background.

Stylistically hard to pigeonhole, multi-layered, comprising symphonic, psychedelic, ambient, jazzy elements, often presented with avantgarde approach, uncommon, frequently coupled with a dissonant or hallucinogenic touch on top of it. Sometimes it even sounds rather innocent ... but with intent ... nothing is thrown in by chance, this needed hours of compositional attempt I am sure. With other words - definitely worthwhile to explore if you're open-minded enough to be interested in synthesizer generated stuff. To bring some notably weird exemplars to the fore first - Confession is carrying basics which definitely could suit for a funeral, Moonmadness lives up to its name exactly, where on Mushroom Dance Pasi sends you on a dizzying trip featuring some oriental sentiment.

With the wonderful The world is so cold and Drops in the ocean we can deeply plunge into nordic melancholy ... cinematic, ambient - a pleasant contrast to the avant tinged first songs which I don't like so much. The album's highlight is saved for the finale - the extended epic, where Heavy Butterflies are fluttering around all over (you should close your eyes when listening to let nature take its course). This is an extremely gripping one, entertaining due to sense of dramaturgy and suspense.

'Lucid Dreams' is a very unique album, probably Pasi's most ambitious. Fellow countryman Eetu Pellonpää has created the nice psychedelic artwork. While checking up my huge music depot only Trip Lava (Joel Lee) comes into my mind when searching for something comparable music wise - just in a wider sense. To sum it up, Pasi Koivu offers an interesting mix of soundscapes with many variants here, which definitely needs time to get involved with.