 
Laivoja Ja Junia
2004
CD
WHITE NOISE
John Marshall
6 July 2004 experimental electronic ambient industrial ambient atmospheric | This is the debut album from ambient Finnish producer Hei (Heikki Jārvi). Its title "Laivoja ja Junia" translates as "Ships and Trains". There are seven tracks here all in the ambient genre. The first of these begins with some electronic crackling mixed with Spanish guitar. A crooning opera-style voice echoes over the top of some weird sounds. 'Laivoja ja Junia Akureyriin' has an hypnotic spaghetti western feel to it. Lots of strange sounds here which I can't make out, but there's certainly guitar and cello. Captivating stuff to say the least. The third track (I'm avoiding writing some of these titles as Finnish isn't the easiest language to copy!) keeps with that Spanish feel but is a lot quieter - a few strums of the guitar with some dark echoes. 'Tango' as the title suggests carries on with the theme. Also I'm told tango is quite popular in Finland! (No, not the drink, they don't have that there.) There's lots of building ambient noise on this one after the initial tango strum of the guitar. Pretty dark hypnotic stuff! So you can't dance the tango to that one. 'Lumisade' carries on with this dark ambient feel. It has a crackling sound like rain. It's quite unnerving really. 'Punainen Harmaa' is probably the most ambient thing here, with its subtle electronic howling sounds. It's also the longest, clocking in at over twelve minutes. The final track has more crackling and some dreamy dark sounds a bit like an accordion. There's lots of noises at the end which sound like a mixture of rain, roads, trains and maybe a ship in there somewhere but I could be wrong. I like this CD a lot as it conjures up a lot of feelings and is quite varied for an ambient recording. |
