Kantele

My Kantele is a follow-up to Amorphis' excellent Elegy. Elegy was an album that worked as a culmination point between death metal and progressive metal, and opened all doors in the rock world for Amorphis. My Kantele doesn't contain anything very new and special; actually, it seems that all four previously unreleased tracks are just leftovers from Elegy. That isn't a bad thing at all - the new songs work well enough and of course these kinds of packages are gold for fans. The most interesting songs on the EP are the covers, Hawkwind's "Levitation" and Kingston Wall's "And I Hear You Call." Amorphis covered "Levitation" very, very well - but unfortunately they copied Kingston Wall's arrangement of the excellent "And I Hear You Call," so it doesn't offer a lot.

Lead guitarist Esa Holopainen and drummer Jan Rechberger formed the band Amorphis in Finland in 1990. To complete their lineup they recruited vocalist/guitarist Tomi Koivusaari and bassist Olli-Pekka Laine. They released a demo in 1991 called Disment of Soul. The demo was so successful in getting attention for the group that they acquired a record deal and released an EP the same year. They next released their first full-length album, The Karelian Isthmus, in 1992. The following year, their early demo recording session was released as Privilege of Evil…

Norwegian folk musician Sinikka Langeland, singer and player of the kantele (the Finnish table harp) is a distinctly non-traditional traditionalist, redefining "folk" in successive projects. 'Maria's Song' finds her in the company of two distinguished classical musicians - organist Kare Nordstoga and "giant of the Nordic viola" Lars Anders Tomter - and on a mission to restore Marian texts to sacred music, weaving folk melodies in between the timeless strains of J S Bach. Langeland made a lot of friends with her sparkling ECM debut Starflowers: "There are jewels everywhere on this arresting example of ego-free music-making. One of the albums of this or any other year" raved the Irish Times. Where Starflowers brought Langeland into the orbit of jazz improvisers, Maria's Song is a meeting and cross referencing of folk and 'classical' energies, and also a righting of historical 'injustice': Religious folk songs are amongst the most distinctive elements of the Norwegian folk tradition, yet the Virgin Mary rarely appears in them.