Within the current Finnish jazz scene’s colourful embrace of ear pleasing and spiritual-leaning ensembles, Fågelbörs have felt a bit like an anomaly. They’re a lean quartet adhered to a virtuosic puritanism and a stern belief that every gesture serves the whole.
A combo composed entirely of underground veterans, they belong to what could be described as the third wave of Finnish improvised music; several of whom helped shape that movement in the early 2000s. Elsewhere their collective lineage wends a bendy path through recent years of Finnish free jazz, experimental music, and dub.They’ve been alternately affiliated with projects such as Rauhan Orkersteri, Jooklo Quartet, Mohel, Kemialliset Ystävät, Odd Funk Records, Muumiot, Pascal & Baya Rays, and more.
As Fågelbörs they’re configured like the four cardinal directions, a dynamic and cosmos-scaled unit capable of summoning elemental blasts of chaos and ecstatic, life-affirming joy. On Bagelfårs, they expand the unique vision of entropy and melody they introduced with their brilliant debut Marjassa (Ultraääni, 2022). Together, Matti Luokkanen (sax), Jaakko Tolvi (percussion), Tuure Tammi (trumpet), and Tero Kemppainen (bass) lock as an Aylerian helix, where effervescent free improv is always counterbalanced with key moments of gleeful, marching band-like reverie and mournful dissolves into passages of narcotic blues.
Its an incendiary second album Monk’s Hood is proud to realise in a limited edition of 200 LP copies. Hold onto your hat, jump in, and wash away.
