Over 17 minutes, a series of bleak yet bright untethered tones segue into broken rhythmic fragments, kind of Joy Orbison meets Autechre, giving way to a cosmic interlude of wavering sine tones before settling into a heads-down session of sleek anonymous techno. This is ‘Three from the 4223′, the opening piece on mysterious Arctic newcomer Ukkonen’s debut album, a wide-eyed and exploratory vision of dance music history viewed through a lens of progressive, jazzy neo-Detroit utopia. Three of the five tracks breach the 15 minute mark (the other two are over eight), and all are tightly controlled processions through moods, themes and rhythms. Ukkonen himself describes the album as “a journey, but in this instance I don’ mean it in a spiritual sense. This album represents physically travellingâ€, and here he recalls Optimo’s JD Twitch on his recent White Light ‘trance’ mix: “I don’ drive but I spend a lot of my life being driven about late at night which can have quite a transcendental effect. I wanted to reclaim the trance word from years of misuse and bad associations and create a mix of what I term pure trance. I knew right from the start the kind of tracks to look out that would evoke the feeling I get late at night, being driven between cities.†There’s more than a little trance too in Ukkonen’s work, albeit of a muddled, frenzied, and intellectual sort.
Aspects of The Isolated Rhythms reminded me variously of Bnjmn, Carl Craig’ Innerzone Orchestra and Vladislav Delay/Luomo, cohesively held together through myriad shifts and junctures. “Haukivesi Spirit’s places the droning streams from the opening track over skipping microhouse drums, the melodic motifs transferred to synthetic folk strings and bell tones. “Tellervo’ is neon acid, like a giddy and sleek Oni Ayihun, ending in a whirl of twinkling stardust.
The final two tracks, both long ones, lay down the “Ukkonen’ sound: a steady 4/4 thud shuffled and skipped with offbeat snares and hat fills and melodic phrases that lurch, trip up and overlap. “Humans, knew in the forest’s moves through squelchy cracked tones before settling down to business, but once there it’s glorious: two phased synth chords switched rhythmically a la The Field, but chopped and tossed like pinball flippers. Somehow, with a few syncopated drums and overlapped melodies, Ukkonen has managed to unite house regimentation and broken scatter, and while the results aren’ quite as revolutionary as some claim (nor the rhythms as isolated) this is still thoroughly exciting music.
Joshua Meggitt
