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AVARUS

Krautrock • Finland


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Avarus picture
Avarus biography
Musical collective AVARUS (both "covetous" in Latin and "space" spelled wrongly in Finnish) was established in Tampere year 2001. The group was borne from fusion of bands THE ANAKSIMANDROS and PYLON, gathering musicians also from groups like KIILA, MUNUAISSUMPOSIUM 1960 and KEMIALLISET YSTÄVÄT. They have had various personnel on their obscure releases, most notable possibly being Jan ANDERZÉN (aka TOMUTONTTU), Roope ERONEN, Tero NISKONEN, Arttu PARTINEN (aka AMON DÜDE), Lars MATTILA, Markus MÄKI, Kevin REGAN, Jukka RÄISÄNEN, LAU NAU, and Merja KOKKONEN (doing currently successful solo career as ISLAJA). The collective's music is often described as part of "free folk" music movement, and their vast discography has studied dadaistic characteristics of noise rock, tribal primitivism, garage acid rock and autistic sonic experiments. The musical philosophies of AVARUS could be compared to avantgardistic explorations of late 1960's Finnish group SPERM, but in my understanding without relations to political scandals; The modern day Finland possibly being now tolerant enough for comparable free existing after the sacrifices of earlier pioneers. The production quality of their albums vary, some being self-released cd-r's and others carefully crafted vinyl LPs. Certainly an interesting group found occasionally from concert stages, record shops, libraries and internet resources.

Discography

Albums:
2001 "Horuksen keskimmäisen silmän mysteerikoulu" (#2)
2003 "III" (HP 273)
2004 "Kimi on Tintti" (#16)
2004 "Jättiläisrotta" (#17)
2005 "Arus" (LF061MP3)
2005 "Ruskeatimantti" (TM 319)
2006 "II" (HP 282)
2006 "Vesikansi" (LAL-28)
2006 AVARUS / JAAKKO TOLVI & CHRIS CORSANO "The Green Wah Tape" (TULI 09)
2007 "Rasvaaja" (2 issues)
2007 AVARUS / MANBEARD "Tour Split CDR" (AB-OC-34)
2008 "Kirppujen saari" (arbor67)
2009 "Toosassa" (ULTRAECZEMA62)
2009 "IV" (AB-OC-42)
2011 "Live" (LalLalLal46)
2013 "Salon Des Amateurs" (PPT-1)
2015 "Oranssi / Vintti" (ikasus-049)

Singles:
2002 "Luonnon ilmiöitä" (BONG-17)
2003 AVARUS / KUKKIVA POLIISI split "Maximum Highway Lifestyle" (Lal Lal Lal #10)
2004 "Maatti Maapähkinä Örmylät / Pyhä"
2004 "Vaahtera Jäniksen hännän...
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AVARUS discography


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AVARUS top albums (CD, LP, MC, SACD, DVD-A, Digital Media Download)

0.00 | 0 ratings
Horuksen keskimmäisen silmän mysteerikoulu
2001
3.00 | 1 ratings
III
2003
2.00 | 2 ratings
Jättiläisrotta
2004
0.00 | 0 ratings
II
2006
0.00 | 0 ratings
Rasvaaja
2007
4.00 | 2 ratings
IV
2009
2.00 | 1 ratings
Emsalö
2013

AVARUS Live Albums (CD, LP, MC, SACD, DVD-A, Digital Media Download)

0.00 | 0 ratings
2004
2004
1.00 | 1 ratings
Arus
2005
2.18 | 2 ratings
Vesikansi
2006
0.00 | 0 ratings
The Green Wah Tape
2006
0.00 | 0 ratings
Manbeard + Avarus / Tour Split CDR
2007
0.00 | 0 ratings
Kirppujen Saari
2008
0.00 | 0 ratings
Toosassa
2008
0.00 | 0 ratings
Salon Des Amateurs
2013
0.00 | 0 ratings
Oranssi / Vintti
2015
3.00 | 1 ratings
Tomissa
2020

AVARUS Videos (DVD, Blu-ray, VHS etc)

AVARUS Boxset & Compilations (CD, LP, MC, SACD, DVD-A, Digital Media Download)

0.00 | 0 ratings
Ruskeatimantti
2005

AVARUS Official Singles, EPs, Fan Club & Promo (CD, EP/LP, MC, Digital Media Download)

0.00 | 0 ratings
Posum Ekor Kait Dataran
2001
0.00 | 0 ratings
Luonnon ilmiöitä
2002
0.00 | 0 ratings
Avarus & Kukkiva Poliisi split Maximum Highway Lifestyle
2003
0.00 | 0 ratings
A-V-P
2003
0.00 | 0 ratings
Maatti Maapähkinä Örmylät / Pyhä
2004
0.00 | 0 ratings
Vaahtera Jäniksen hännänkieliset seikkailut
2004

AVARUS Reviews


Showing last 10 reviews only
 Tomissa by AVARUS album cover Live, 2020
3.00 | 1 ratings

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Tomissa
Avarus Krautrock

Review by DamoXt7942
Forum & Site Admin Group Avant/Cross/Neo/Post Teams

— First review of this album —
3 stars Chaos. Exactly chaos. Wondering what AVARUS wanted to say 'in the tower' (in English, "Tornissa") in 33 minutes. Self- interpreted polit dissonance filled with improv sound formations and oriental, tribal energetic atmospheres ... I have no idea if such a phrase like this would be appropriate for their soundscape. Synthesizer-based melody lines are quite surrealistic and ultradimensional, and percussion-oriented rhythm bases are pretty ethnic, ancient, and conventional. Such a mysterious musical collective should be natural and essential in a religious ceremony or ritual. And from the beginning of this suite created with a collection of randomized funky tunes and light but methodical percussion sounds, it's mystic that the flavour and taste is sweet and aromatic.

Such a designated flow does not change in the middle part, formed with slow and steady rhythmic grounds and heavy fuzzy bassy tips. Sounds like each instrument plays and makes sounds in a selfish or self-centered manner but the sound combinations by all creators and instruments should be very positive and unified. On the other hand, we can enjoy more rock-ish electric guitar plays and distorted synthesizer discharges around them in the latter part. Not a simple electronic but a balanced matured mixture of rock and ambience. Incredible power should be involved in their sound collective. Such an innovative music hotchpotch in AVARUS holds the similarity to the polit pioneers of Krautrock. Chaotic explosions are always awesome.

 Emsalö by AVARUS album cover Studio Album, 2013
2.00 | 1 ratings

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Emsalö
Avarus Krautrock

Review by DamoXt7942
Forum & Site Admin Group Avant/Cross/Neo/Post Teams

— First review of this album —
2 stars Another hoax. In this creation AVARUS collaborators are yielding their inner mind and themselves to the psychedelic atmosphere around them. "Emsalö" released as a limited edition on Troglosound Label in 2013 and re-released digitally via Artsy Records in 2021 possesses such a mysterious, potent dynamo deeply in it. Sounds like they would play the electronic device just like what they bump into in their mind or what they see in front of their eyes under a kind of psychic transformation. The electronic audible combinations sound not unified nor polished but like a randomized improvised sound enumeration.

From the beginning of the A-Side, we get veiled in a challenging improv sound collective featuring non-melodic explosive electronica eccentrica. The first slowtempo percussive texture is vanishing soon and supra-lo-fi disturbed noise area is appearing endless. Even slightly comfortable are repetitive sharp-edged masses of noise in the middle part, but totally inorganic and spiritless. Guess they could see such dreamy, fantastic patterns like the sleeve pic. Sticky sound discharges are sometimes colourful but sometimes monotonous and tedious. Inorganicity gets more serious and more nervous in the B-Side. A sort of sound hoaxter reminds us of the similarity to a hoax pioneer Mittelwinternacht '71.

The more improvisational, less melodious ultra-egocentric noise mess is rather interesting in some sense. But let me say, this 'obscure' creation cannot be recommended for authentic Krautrock fans but for electronic bizarre freaks.

 Vesikansi by AVARUS album cover Live, 2006
2.18 | 2 ratings

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Vesikansi
Avarus Krautrock

Review by Hiram

2 stars Very free-form improvised lo-fi racket here. This is a live recording from Dublin from 2005 and divided into four parts that are all more or less the same. There are drums, a guitar or two, keyboards and who knows what else. Sometimes there's a bit of rhythm going on (usually something sounding like a pattern from a cheapo/toy keyboard) but very little structure or communication between players. It's not free jazz, not stoner space jam, nor just noise, but perhaps something between all three.

Sometimes they stumble into some interesting sound or combination of them but as a whole it's all very random. I like most the parts where they calm down a bit, such as most of the final track. Those are reminiscent of some more experimental old krautrock. Tracks 3 and 4 feature Tara Burke (who used to make music of her own as Fursaxa, I've no idea if she's still active) but you can't really tell what she contributes.

There is undoubtedly peculiar kind of charm in something this free-form and unashamedly anti-musical, but it doesn't make this any more listenable. Only for the most adventurous fringe stuff admirers.

 Jättiläisrotta by AVARUS album cover Studio Album, 2004
2.00 | 2 ratings

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Jättiläisrotta
Avarus Krautrock

Review by Hiram

2 stars Avarus were (are?) a Finnish "free-wierd-folk-improv" collective most active between 2001-2010. Jättiläisrotta (Finnish for "giant rat") is their album from 2004 consisting of 10 tracks that seem to be excerpts from longer free-form jams. They mostly feature acoustic instruments (guitar, percussions of various kinds) but there's also keyboards and other more electronic or processed sounds whose origin you can only guess.

I won't go through the album in detail. Some tracks work better than others, as expected. Sometimes they really get into the zone with hypnotic organic pulse and otherworldy ambience, sometimes it's just pointless tuneless noodling. I'd say it's about 50/50 here. Overall there's naïve charm and freedom of expression at play but some of it is just plain silly (yet certainly it's been fun making this).

Fans of early Amon Düül and other more acoustic, jam-oriented and free form Krautrock may well enjoy this. Others probably not so much. Two stars in the end, add one if you're a fan of this kind of stuff.

 Jättiläisrotta by AVARUS album cover Studio Album, 2004
2.00 | 2 ratings

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Jättiläisrotta
Avarus Krautrock

Review by Matti
Prog Reviewer

2 stars The music of this Finnish group is very baffling to pproach for the first time. Having read about them as "avant-garde noise" I could simply have a quick listen and go forward. One reason for me to find out what AVARUS is all about is that recently I got quite interested in the solo works of one of the members, Islaja (=Merja Kokkonen). Her vocal music is also pretty strange but definitely not without very unique charm. And now I'm testing whether I may find any kind of charm in this instrumental experimentation stamped as Krautrock here.

First off, I'd like to be informed about the members and their instruments. One can only see a band photo. By the way, what is the cartoon cat Garfield doing in the leaflet, probably without a permission? Damn, I'm starting to sound like a lawman. Apparently I'm having some difficulties right now to concentrate to the music, but I'm finally getting there!

Noise may be too loud word for this. There aren't much of solid structures or melodies to be heard, but the weird playing of whatever unlisted instruments (percussions, guitars and/or other string instruments sounding out of tune, human voices used as instruments, some wind instruments and keyboards too) does build an ambience that is not attacking or disturbing - at least if you're at all familiar with avant-garde popular music. The "normal" playing skill is replaced by totally prejudice-free approach in sonic self-expression. No use wondering if these people would be actually capable of producing normal, well performed music with their instruments or not. They have achieved something that could be thought of as art.

Based on this first listening there are maybe four tracks out of ten on this 33-minute album that rise above nonsense out-of-tune doodling. For your interest, their translations would be roughly: 'Big Medicine Ship', 'Prince Halonen', 'Inter-Sergeant's Inter-Cone' and 'Swan Stone at Not's'. The track titles in general are more amusing and humorous than the music itself, which could be played at an exhibition of difficult, conceptual modern art. 2½ stars rounded down for poor and infoless design.

 IV by AVARUS album cover Studio Album, 2009
4.00 | 2 ratings

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IV
Avarus Krautrock

Review by Eetu Pellonpaa
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator

4 stars Avarus is another band from my home country, which I learned to know from live concert stages instead of records. The first of these experiences was from a commemoration party of a Kallio-district's small comic, book & record store Pitkämies, where it took for me quite long time to realize that the band is not doingtheir sound check, but already playing their random music set. I also saw their hypnotic and more coherent stage performances, when they were warming up Acid Mother's Temple at Nosturi in October 2012, and when sharing Hectorock club with Esa Kotilainen and Hazard Wings at Lepakkomies in April 2013. These gigs motivated me to search their records from the metropolitan area libraries, and I learned the group's discography varying from more loosely crafted cd-r recordings to vinyl LP's with more piety allocated to their production process.

These vinyl sides flow freely over three unnamed cuts, gliding first upon pleasant variations on swarming figures of a rhythmic jungle. This vividly inhabited landscape is borne from soft beatings of electric guitar, primitive percussions and form giving bass lines. The improvisation focuses unrelenting to its minimal one-note "dismelodics", emphasizing on minor variations of intensity and myriad shifting details of the motley surface covering this solid compositional entity. On few smoother moments and fade-outs the building blocks of this sonic wall are easier to specify, revealing subtle aural tapestries of either cosmic synthesizers or electronic treatments. The second impression is slightly more neurotic with unstable rhythm elements and rusty guitar awesomeness. Menacing beating noises give associations of the most brutal late 1960's krautrock pioneer tapings, here only with a better sound quality and more modern instrumentation. The second side of the album dives to sea of dreamy crystalline sound forms, peeling different layers of musicians' innovations about possibilities on abstract voice constellations. The rhythm power stays mostly on ethereal ambient level, enforcing the surreal landscape qualities of the composition, and smoothen the shamanist characteristics of the first side. Only on last minutes the album gets closed by raw guitar riff smashing and wild percussion beating, reaching a stepless surge of power until disappearing to the void, where this vinylful of abstract stimulations originally emerged.

I believe one aspect on modern days underground movement's agenda is to keep the releases available only to more selected markets, concert attendees, friends and people the band might consider pleasant. I think this is in a way fun approach, allowing the members of the collective to keep some sort of control to the aura of awareness about their artistic expression. Anybody interested of obscure adventures in sonic trance mechanics within organic vintage current might be blessed, if being allowed to get immersed in this perimeter of arctic avantgarde logics. I do not detect standing within that circle myself, but feel comfort from warmth of its flames, and admire these stimulating architectural details from my proper sociological position.

 Arus by AVARUS album cover Live, 2005
1.00 | 1 ratings

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Arus
Avarus Krautrock

Review by Epignosis
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator

— First review of this album —
1 stars Many, many minutes of howling and percussion, this is like an imminent band of orcs and goblins that are prepared to descend upon a frightened band of travelers at any moment- only they never do. They just remain in the hills, wailing and beating their drums. This performance, consisting of a single, half-hour long track, sounds quite tribal, nearly ancestral. The primal humming, the incessant beating, and the droning of the other instruments are all presented in a raw, visceral production, all clearly improvised on the stage. I would only recommend this to those who appreciate the more avant-garde side of this genre, those who wouldn't mind a more cacophonic version of "Moonchild," although I doubt many of those would be impressed.
 IV by AVARUS album cover Studio Album, 2009
4.00 | 2 ratings

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IV
Avarus Krautrock

Review by DamoXt7942
Forum & Site Admin Group Avant/Cross/Neo/Post Teams

4 stars Trippy, folksy, cosmic psychedelic tribalism they've squeezed forward via this creation. Not known except AVARUS were founded in Tampere, Finland in 2001 but cannot help saying what an addiction via this album "IV" a Finnish combo have launched actually.

Basically hot and desert-y percussive minimalism lets us navigate another innovative commune. Very fruity their spacey synthesizer-based metallic thrashes are indeed, and amazingly this minimalistika cannot annoy us at all ... not mysterious maybe, if they launch mind-blowing flavoury addiction via this soundscape. The former part on Side A (anonymous one) goes ahead with grabbing our heart.

Yup their craziness would upgrade step by step. The latter "A" is another killa one. Closer to simple space folk rock than the previous one but no alteration as for dry desert sound texture we can find. Guitar riffs get more freaky and flexible, and comfortable. No refined atmosphere around them really, but guess they might have played under mind-altering condition.

Upon the B side they give us bully explosion called experimentalism. Decent Krautrock drenched in freakout sound shower created with percussive confusion, kosmische noiselines and schizophrenic guitar discharge we can experience. Why cannot we fly away into the real heaven with devilish agents heralded by their soundmachinegun? This is the way they live over. Recommended for every Krautrock freak.

Thanks to Eetu Pellonpää for the artist addition.

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