MILKY WAY MOSES

The last 1970's studio album done by the fabulous Finnish jazz rock band offers a bit more psychedelic and culminated grooves than their three previous albums. The peaceful pastoral elements of their personally most favored album "Lambertland" have dissolved, and I can understand why some fans of this band do not appreciate this record. There has been a two year's gap between their previous studio album, and the bassist player has been changed. Heikki Virtanen (Jukka Tolonen's cousin I recall?) has replaced Måns, and Tolonen and Pöyry also do some keyboard playing. Possibly these changes of personnel and time has affected the music, pushing it towards more spontaneous jazz solutions and acceptance of striking harmonies. The opening title track "Milky Way Moses" has catchy grooves and good melodic passages, representing the most accessible side of this record. The following track runs over ten minutes, "Caught from The Air" has hypnotic, pulsing tones, and some wah-wah treaded bass lines creating powerful psychedelic feelings. If one is interested of this stuff, I would recommend hunting down the 4CD box "Anna Mulle Lovee", which has some archive material of different Finnish bands. There's a cool live version of this song titled "Lennosta Kii!", revealing original Finnish lyrics of this Eero Koivistoinen composition. That song was originally on Mr. Koivistoinen's "Valtakunta" album from year 1968, on which I think Eero Raittinen was also featured as a singer. In addition of the two shorter tracks I would mention song "Confusing the Issue", which resembles the title track by its acoustic rhythm guitars, saxes and bold singing of Mr. Raittinen. His voice does not feel as pleasant as Frank Robson's tone to my ears, but he's a good singer though and knows "How to start a Day" after paranormal nights.