- Sami Koivikko’s sound used to be a dub-techno synthesis rooted in deep house and electronica – ‘Immer’ techno, as one reviewer recently described the style. His releases on Marco Haas’ usually frenetic Shitkatapult imprint were sometimes shy, sometimes quite graceful deep/tech/house numbers that seemed to point to the emergence of an interesting new talent, but his long player lacked coherence, and ended up in the bargain bin. Pääjääsä is a complete rethink of Sami’s sound design, and owes more to the buzz, clip and static of Sender or Areal than the deep stuff of yore. This is chromium tech-house with gnarzing melodies, though not as flagrantly ‘rock’ as Misc’s biggest rave-ups. There’s some neat contrasts contained in the tracks too, that only become apparent on the headphones – a lot of attention has been paid to the composition of small, pure microsound textures that sit in between the long, buzzing sound planes and the hard, tech-house percussion. The title track could easily be something by Basteroid, with a rearing, all-slaying electroid melody, while ‘Dore’ goes for the break with a huge, sawed metal texture that works its way through the track. But the pick of the bunch is ‘Pientare’, which begins by contrasting a test tone beat with a huge saw wave melody, which like the other two tracks on the EP, gradually builds and deforms on its way to a messy crescendo, overshot by some delicate synth keys. Well worth checking.
TracklistA Pääjääsä
B1 Dore
B2 Pientare