HURMOS

Another super-promising diverse post-rock new wave from Finland. VIRTA were founded as an experimental trio in Helsinki for launching post-rock blended with jazz, electronic, or ambient. This opus "Hurmos" was released in 2016 as their second full-length album, which features full of various, colourful appearances of musical collective. Recently it's true that lots of wonderful combos or projects are in Finnish post rock / psychedelic progressive scene, and such a fantastic act have added a bright contribution into the Finnish rock dictionary.

Actually I don't like to write a comment for every single track in an album, but it would be good for me to do so this time because of their musical diversity and eclecticism. The great departure "Aallot" has complicated but impressive electronic dissipative structure and sensitive and sensual long-acting ambience. Enough for the audience to get immersed into the stuff straightforwardly. And the following heroic action "About To Fly" involves wondrous catchy but slightly infernal melody lines and trumpet-oriented jazz-coloured disclosure. Non-simplified trumpet play reminds me of sorta homage for Herb Alpert or so. The instrumental song itself is quite cool and dry, but we cannot avoid feeling massive passion in it.

In "Time Travel" are lots of constructive features e.g. mysterious atmospheric electronika, mourning guitar fuzzes, complex rhythmic structure. This track will let us enjoy traveling abroad or in another dimension under such a tough situation. "Härmä" can be called as a kind of post-rock-textured free jazz drenched in electronic weirdness. But why doesn't it catch our heart violently? A mixture of drastic offensive approaches and listener-friendly pop essence is superb. On the other hand, cute percussive synthesizer plays and catchy heartwarming melodic fantasy are dancing on "The Landing" wonderland.

"Uni" is a slowtempo, crazy downer calm, but enthusiastic one, featuring dry-fruity trumpet acceleration and dissonant guitar exclamation. This tricky combination should be pretty impressive, innovative. On the contrary, the last spurt "On The Run" is ultimately an uptempo, delightful, and explosive epilogue. Slightly exaggerating but clear, edgy synthesizer-oriented sound crystals are fine and delicious. Such a powerful, energetic creativity definitely encourages us.

Finally let me say that it would be a shame I have not known such a fascinating creation for about five years. Highly recommended yes.

6th February, 2023: Virta - Hurmous (post/jazz-rock, 2016)

Ever since Norwegian group 1099 hooked me with their sax-infused crescendocore, jazzy post-rock has been a bit of a favourite microgenre for me, and Virta are definitely the best exponents of it that I've found since then. This is fairly within the lines of third-wave post-rock - emotional chord progressions, big tremolo-picked leads, intense drum performances and a general sense of good-but-predictable. What raises this above good and into great is not only the jazz, but the influence from electronic and ambient music. The jazz here is more Amon Tobin or Flying Lotus than it is John Coltrane, particularly with the skittery percussion on a few tracks. There's a jazziness to the post-rock melodies too, which is something that always stood out about 1099 as well - it feels like many of the lines are born from a jazz perspective but played with rock instruments, as there's a much clearer melodic sense to some of these leads. This is definitely one of my favourite recent instrumental albums, within genre or not, and is further proof that adding saxophone always yields better results.

8.0 (6th listen)

Part of my listening diary from my facebook blog: www.facebook.com/TheExoskeletalJunction