Review | Songlines

Pyhä Veri Vuotaa

Top of the World

Rating: ★★★★

View album and artist details

Album and Artist Details

Artist/band:

Pelkkä Poutanen

Label:

Eclipse Music

April/2022

The early morning mist rolls in across the water and pulls you into a hidden landscape; it’s enticing, haunting, mesmerising, spiritual and hypnotic. Pelkkä Poutanen’s first independent adventure holds true to a strong folk tradition while at the same time crossing genres and the global plains of sacred experimentalism. The album, titled Pyhä Veri Vuotaa (Sacred Blood Will Spill) lays clear its intentions and explores Poutanen’s interest in the personal experience of the sacred. She reaches in to the imagination to unpack the need for deities and the yearning for sacredness.

Best known as songwriter and lead vocalist with Finnish band UTU, Petra Poutanen releases her first solo album as Pelkkä Poutanen (Just Poutanen) and is the only musician to perform on the album. She playfully and skilfully demonstrates her vocal talents including Scandinavian and Finno-Ugric styles as well as a variety of throat singing approaches. Her ability to technically navigate a range of electronic techniques and musical instruments shines throughout. A Chinese guzheng flutters through several tracks as well as a kantele (apparently made from a skateboard). The album is cinematic and a space for hymns to become joyous dances around the fire, like ‘Sinne on Velka Viimeinenkin’. The opening throat singing is alluring and then generously inviting throughout the rest of the album.

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