Finnish Music Quarterly 3/95
Ambient meets ethno-jazz
The influence of ambient on other styles can he heard most clearly in the fastest offerings from RinneRadio, a band from the jazz fringe. Over the years this group, run by sax-player Tapani Rinne, has dropped its drums and guitar and swapped its jazzrooted rhythmic style in favour of an electronic heat and sampler landscaping. The highly personal attitude which the band adopted from the very beginning has been flexible enough to encompass new musical styles as the whim took them. In addition to splashes of ambient, the group has experimented with hiphop DJ collaborations. Twice it has provided performances in Helsinki where the audience has been able to hear the band playing live in one room while a remix version of the same concert could be heard in the adjacent one.
On his own solo album, Lapp yoik-singing specialist Wimme Saari, who previously was a soloist with RinneRadio, combines aspects of ambient, jazz and ethnic music. Tapani Rinne, who was principal producer of the album, and RinneRadio's rhythm experts Kajasto and Jari Kokkonen provide the spacious sound world which supports Wimme's traditional yoik-singing voice. Wimme was one of the soloists, along with Björk, Suzanne Vega and John Gale, on Frenchman Hector Zazou's album "Songs From The Cold Seas", released last winter. New music with an am bient influence seems to be developing in Finland pretty much according to international trends. Ambient is starting to have an ever looser connection with techno and the club scene and its special properties are finding their way into other areas of pop. In Finland at least, the ambient sound has been broad-mindedly applied to jazz and ethnic music. Artists working strictly with electronics have also been able to establish their own personal profiles. Foreign critics have dubbed Finnish ambient "cool and transparent". But in the context of techno's tendency towards pigeonholing, a characteristic "Finnish sound" , has been nothing but an advantage benefitting artists in the market place.
llkka Mattila