Claes Andersson, Kalevi Seilonen, Erkki — Sähkö-shokki-ilta
The pieces story starts in early 1968 with Finnish experimental film director & painter Eino Ruutsalo, who arranged an arts festival called Valo ja liike (”Light and Movement”) at Amos Anderson Museum in Helsinki 7–14 February 1968. As part of this festival, Ruutsalo arranged an evening of performances at the Museum, including electronic music, ”machine poems”, light shows and screenings of Ruutsalo’s own experimental short films. The main attraction of this evening on February 9, 1968, called “Sähkö-shokki-ilta” was the integrated synthesizer designed and built by Erkki Kurenniemi for the Department of Musicology at the University of Helsinki. It was called ”Sähkö-ääni-kone” (”Electric Sound Machine”) and used for ”modulating” poetry reading in real-time.Composer/musician Otto Donner ”conducted” the evening.
Sadly no sound recordings seem to exist of the live piece , & there are only a few photographs( which are included here). The recording offered up here is not the finished piece as such, a concert or even a document recording. What we have here is a reel-to-reel tape recording of a rehearsal that took place on February 8, 1968, the day before the actual event. The recording conists of Poets Kalevi Seilonen and Claes Andersson practice their onomatopoetic and metaphysical rhymes, while Kurenniemi does the electronic processing simultaneously according to instructions given by Donner. Also on the recording there are female voices too from Ruutsalo Meri Vennamo, Kurenniemi’s girlfriend at the time
So basically what we get here is a mix of: performed poetry, that is whispered, dramatic spoken & sang, sometimes layered, & often effect altered. Weaves of & focused dips into late 60’s electro texturing & spacey effects. As already mentioned all the spoken word elements here are in either Finish & Swedish- so if like me, you don’t understand either language I guess you are missing out a big part of this releases point. But that said I did find this recording quite strangely compelling in say twenty or so minute bursts, as the spoken word elements are often seemingly repeated words or series of words- so as I don’t understand them they worked as their own sonic structures instead of language.
Sadly also all the releases linear notes are also in Finish too, but if you go along to the Ektro Records website there is a English translation( at least of the releases background). So all told this is a rather unusual & strange release, but if you are looking for something a little different & odd that’s based around spoken word, vocal effects & mainly minimal electronics this may well be worth a look.