AVARUUSASEMA

The instrumental opener 'Kohti tuntematonta' (= Towards the unknown) rocks with bubbling energy, and so does 'Hyperkuutio' (= Hyper cube). How to describe the sound? It's somewhere between Steve Hillage and The Police at their most energetic. 'Lasisilmä' (= Glass eye) is the first track with vocals. Musically it continues in the same uptempo direction with a faint early 80's Rush vibe to my ears, except for the male vocals and harmonies that come closer to, say, Fish On Friday.

The instrumental 'Yläkannella' (= On the upper deck) has a charming late 70's disco influence and a fusion groove combined with psychedelic space rock. This is a lovely piece in its sunny happiness. The title track has acoustic guitar and many kinds of vocal attributions, and being in a slower tempo it has a powerful, slightly dystopic atmosphere. This direction is taken further in 'Palava aurinko' (= Burning sun) which is a gorgeously emotional prog-pop song with good vocals.

The next pop-sensible vocal song 'Ohikulkija' (= Passer-by) returns to the Signals era Rush reminding energy. If the 80's Genesis were one of the inspirations as the band mentions, they really used that influence in a good way. I also came to think of some late 70's Camel songs such as 'Wing and a Prayer' mainly for the vocals, but this song is more interesting. The final song 'Universum' sounds immediately great. Slowish tempo, moody guitar chords and a very nice female vocal guest appearance from Heli Valkama, joined by a male voice.

This is a pleasant album of partly instrumental pop-prog alternating between happy uptempo energy and the more emotionally oriented songwriting with intriguing lyrics in Finnish. It's remarkable how a band can do two completely different albums and artistically succeed in both of them. Alkusoitto may more easily find its international target audience, but personally in the end I'm perhaps more charmed by this poppier album featuring vocals.

The spacey music on this album is instrumental in the musical sense, but most tracks feature voice samples in Finnish (often sort of distanced, sometimes also distorted), easy to imagine being part of a sf movie about astronauts and astronomers. The voices speak mostly of cosmic theories like "What would happen if you fell into a black hole?', as the second track asks in its title, and of astronauts' dangerous tasks in space. Unfortunately the non-Finnish speakers miss that textual level, but then again it's primarily part of the atmosphere and doesn't demand to be fully understood.

The title of the album refers both to the Big Bang and to the musical term overture. The synth-oriented title track reminds me of the space themed pieces of the mid-70's Vangelis. The male voice speculates what happened in the very beginning of the universe. The mentioned black hole themed track gives bigger emphasis on the spatial and clear guitar texture. The soaring, spacey melodies remind me the early 70's Pink Floyd (Meddle, Dark Side). 'Spagetti-ilmiö' (= the spaghetti phenomen) illustrates the nightmarish imaginary situation in a more rhythmic psychedelic space rock and panicking voice samples. 'Avaruuskävely' (= space walk), despite containing the danger element of a hole in the equipment and oxygen slowly running out, sounds relatively sunny and laid-back with its bouncy guitar chords and synthesized voice doodling.

The final track 'Matematiikan ja aineen todellisuudet' (= Realities of mathematics and substance) has a continuos hypnotic pattern, and the voice talks this and that of the space. Above I said that the speeches heard throughout the album are primarily an atmospheric detail. While I appreciate the use of mother tongue instead of English for change, which surely increases the charming personality of the album, I do feel a bit sorry for the non-Finnish as they will miss the exciting and hilarious narrative level. Musically speaking, the album has a respectable open- minded variety (undoubtedly the reason the band fell into Eclectic Prog instead of e.g. Psychedelic/Space rock), spanning from the ambient, Vangelis-like synth orientation to the rockier moments. And yet the whole feels very coherent.

In a while I'll review Avaruusasema's new album Kilonova which brings new sides to their space-inspired music.