369

Finnish band Huminoita plays instrumental psychedelic rock with some Post-Rock and jazzy ingredients. 369, officially released just few days ago, is their third album. I rated All Is Two (2015) with four stars (actually 3½ rounded up) and this time rounding down seems more suitable, but I'm not suggesting 369 to be musically weaker. In fact my main complaints have nothing to do with the music itself: the CD could have just as well been wrapped in a simple cardboard sleeve without the plastic disc holder, since the inner side has no graphics at all. Why the band members are - again - unnamed? Hardly because one of them is also the leader of the record label (he's mentioned for recording & mixing). I'm not fond of a "less is more" attitude in the covers of albums. BTW, the tracks are numbered as A1, A2, ..., B1,... which is unappropriate on a CD, and there are accidentally two A3's.

No idea what the numeral album title is referring to. Most of the track titles are made-up words such as 'Maalismoon' (mixing Finnish and English around the third month) or 'Marsvolga'. The music is pleasant, slightly melancholic and introspective psychedelic space rock, more on the calm and dreamy side than on hard rocking edginess. All of the eight tracks are under 8 minutes. The previous album had a bit more variety on track lengths, and also on the arrangements. It featured some wordless singing on the background and more reeds; I spotted no human voice here, and only 'Sandmare' seems to have saxophone in a bigger role. Another reason why I personally prefer their second album is that it feels spacier, or Krautrock-ish if you like, compared to the more structured feel of 369. But this album is equally worth listening to if you enjoy melancholic, instrumental psychedelic rock.