Kipul - "Kipul"

Kipul - 3:50 (Rabbit Isln 2008)

Kipul - Kipul / Rabbit Isln

Last year we featured a review for Tampere, Finland's Cahier (Orchestra) and the album Desacreditado. The man behind the project, Marko Neumann, was a veteran of Finnish punk bands in his youth and (like a lot of other punk players tired of the same three chords) had veered off into darker, stranger territories in some ways just as brutal and aggressive as any oi-oi-oi chant to your grandmother. The record was good and painted many of my afternoons last summer, but Neumann went mum after that excepting the late-'07 release Höyryveturi out on Cut Hands.

While a number of things have happened in the interim for me - all of them well documented on these pages and elsewhere - Neumann too has been busy. This shouldn't come as a surprise given his numerous monikers (Body Odour, Kasvain, Candy Cane and Polka Dot Sunflower Bed Orchestra among them), but this time Neumann is behind the scenes rather than in front of them. His latest project is a net-label called Rabbit Isln, and its first release is in keeping with the sludgy back catalog he has been maintaining since he began making music. Welcome to the like-minded release of Uusimaa's Kipul.

Not much is known about the personal background of this one-man ambient droner. From the solitary photo on his MySpace, it seems pretty obvious this is not a coincidence. He has two blog entries and both are terse (One is an excerpt, not even the whole thing, from the press release for this album). His debut is only six songs, 25 minutes long. But it says a lot about where he's coming from and why he's on Rabbit Isln in the first place. Neumann's Höyryveturi was only 25 minutes too.

Though it fades in slowly, "Little Boy Lost" opens on a gothic note with a distorted, groveling British voice over burbling noise transmissions and post-apocalyptic dreariness. The poem recited appears to be "A Little Boy Lost" by Polish writer Tommy Jantarek. I think? My Polish is a little rough in that I've never actually learned Polish, but the very Poe-esque poem sets the tone for a dark, dank, claustrophobic record. Funnily enough, splashing water and chirping birds end the track. It represents two extremes of sound that adhere to Kipul's mantra that "confusion is sound."

Indeed, when the droning anger home to "Opened" thunders in and phases in and out like a hovering UFO, you know you won't be confusing it for the Orinoco flow anytime soon. The distorted strums, the sharp pangs, all of it is an assault on the listener that is meant to confuse them. Fade in drums. "Opened" may be my favorite track on this album, drafty winds and ghoulish sirens passing through the open window where aliens await you. It is brilliant but painfully short; such is the nature of Kipul.

"3:50" is the most accessible track here and comes as a bit of a surprise given how aggressive and distant the rest of the music had felt. This has a consistent beat and an endearing, immediately recognizable grand piano line that makes it easy to remember. In some ways it is also reminiscent of another Scandinavian act, damaged Swede-folk goods Library Tapes. This is far busier with its grating guitars and light percussion, but the same pervading sense of loneliness remains.

The riff that would open up stadium tours were Kipul ever to get that far is left to the concluding track of this album, "Welcome to the Jungle (Mode2)," which takes that infamous intro and then morphs it into a snarling beast of distortion and, literally, snarling vocals. Sampled lions and tigers or merely the work of some ProTools trickery? You do your own interpretation. Kipul has already done his.

In the ever-growing field of net-labels and homespun sonic agitators, Kipul is an exceptional case. The man has his act together from the off and it will be interesting to see how he develops from here or if he has already arrived at the barren, desolate, stormy sonic terra firma he sought to begin with. I cannot judge. I can only say that this is an impressive release and Rabbit Isln's seven-act collective will be a net-label to watch in the coming months. No big plans, no big deals, just small releases now and then? That will do for now, Marko. You keep doing what you do.