Finland.

Achewood, a particular favourite webcomic of mine, has been irritating me a bit lately. Part of it has been to do with the lazy Brit stereotype, frequently employed by American writers to get cheap laughs from their unworldly, insular, ignorant audience (lazy stereotype rebuttal, -20hp!). I'm not being culturally sensitive (much), I just object to lazy writing feeding ignorance. Onstad has been able to play the Brit joke well, but managed to wear it out very quickly in a recent story arc.

And this is yesterday's strip:



Firstly, metal is fucking awesome. But that's not so important. The source of my annoyance is the assertion that Finland is "the world's musical toilet drain", and I can disprove that with a single link: Fonal apparently exists in a sleepless, snow-blanketed world of dawn bleeding into twilight and back again. Fonal acts make music as though all they've ever heard in their lives are fractured broadcasts through broken transistor radios tuned to stations long expired. They are apocalypse survivors struggling to recreate lost arts.

Paavoharju garnered cult acclaim for their debut, Yhä Hämärää, and are today releasing their second full-length, Laulu laakson kukista. I'm pretty excited for this, it has to be said, but to tide me over, I've been enjoying the sampler, Laulu laakson kukasta. I present here the most interesting piece, "Kassetti Moskovasta". Paavoharju's musical patchwork recorded live on an ancient cassette deck, with every hiss, skip and warp digitised for download, creates a battered artefact from that post-apocalyptic world I spoke of earlier.

Paavoharju - Kasetti Moskovasta
Paavoharju - Ilmaa Virtaa (from Yhä Hämärää)

Any mp3s posted are for sampling purposes. If you are the copyright owner of a file, and would like it removed, simply e-mail me.