Kuuntele Ääntä (1977)

Year 2012 I stopped working at a place where I had been employed for 11 years. I visited the home of one of my colleagues, and since her vinyl collection only collected dust, she offered me to check it out and take all the albums I wanted, as a goodbye gift. I was so overwhelmed by the offer that I barely managed to say yes, but after some prompting I indulged. One of the albums that followed me home was this one. My colleague had lived a number of years in Finland a long time ago, and therefore there were some Finnish records in her shelf. However, this one had been bought in Uppsala (Sweden), at the mythical record shop Musikörat. According to the price tags that are still there, she paid 2 Skr. (around a quarter) for it, it had been reduced from the previous price 5 Skr (around a dollar). Probably not a record that sold in heaps.

Discogs classifies the album genre as Folk, World & Country, and its style as Political. Since it's only sung in Finnish, and all the text on the sleeve is in Finnish, I don't know what the songs are about, and on internet I find no information. So this is a record I can only listen to for the melodies, the message is completely lost on me. But it does remind me of some Swedish political music from the 70's, and the cover sure gives you a vibe of a leftist engagement. According to Google Translate, the album title means Listening to sound.

A variety of artists contribute on the album and it's better than I thought. The initial songs are
really nice, beautiful melodies and harmonies in the singing. I agree with Discogs' folk definition, some songs sound like Fairport Convention. However, I don't hear any country. A few songs into the album there's an new artist, he has almost an opera voice that I'm not too fond of, but the arrangement with piano and flute is nice. Since I usually focus more on melodies in music, rather than text, initially I don't have a problem that I don't understand what they're singing, but after a while, somewhere on side B, it becomes a thing as I think the music stops being interesting, a bit repetitive. An understanding of the texts would probably help to keep up the interest.

If I compare, for example with Röda Bönor, a Swedish political group from the 70's, Kuuntele Ääntä is much better. The arrangements are nicely done with a lot of air, acoustic guitars, piano, flute, a saxophone in some places. And the melodies are (often) beautiful. The language is probably the main negative thing. Finnish has a special sound, that puts a clear mark on the songs. Compared for example with Spanish or French, where I also don't understand so much of what they're singing, Finnish feels rougher and more strange in its sounds. The record is released on Love Records, a Finnish legendary label created in the 60s, that ceased to exist 1979. One can't say their logo is very subtle.

On Discogs, one copy of the record has been sold, for the price of 22 Canadian dollars. So my colleague's investment of a quarter has yielded a few thousand percent in return (if she had kept the record).


Tracklist

Side A
1 Herran Pää On Paljaana 3:25
2 Heilani On Kuin Helluntai 4:00
3 Soi Lauluni 3:45
4 Kuuntele Ääntä 3:21
5 Ay 2:05
6 Atlantin Valleilla 2:31

Side B
1 Vallankumous 1:35
2 Lakkopäivänä 3:19
3 Käy Tehtaan Portilla Miettimään 3:18
4 Laulu Turhautumisesta 2:25
5 Kuolema 3:35
6 Kaverit Yes Toverit 2:55