★Svart
The Albums: 1968-1972
14LP box set, black vinyl, slipmat, and a 64-page book. 1968 to 1972, saw the release of 6 studio albums from Folk’s first supergroup Pentangle. Featuring the songwriting talents of guitarists Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, alongside bassist Danny Thompson, drummer Terry Cox and singer Jacqui McShee, their innovative folk-fusion encompassed elements of jazz as well as pop, which left a lasting influence and legacy. The first 5 albums were released on legendary Folk label Transatlantic, while Sol…
For Children
The 1970 album For Children by Eero Koivistoinen was originally released by the book publishing company, Otava, which was responsible for his earlier two albums as well. Jazzpuu/Sähkö Recordings reissued For Children in 2006 as did we in 2016, yet both of these releases have been hard to find ever since. This time around Svart brings this important piece of Koivistoinen's career, a successful amalgam of acoustic jazz and funky fusion back on the market on a limited Svart exclusive blue vinyl ed…
Odysseus
Odysseus, Eero Koivistoinen's first proper jazz album, gets its title from the wandering spirit of its songs, traveling from one mood to another. Performed by the Eero Koivistoinen Quintet & Sextet, because Koivistoinen wanted to extend his standard quartet (Koivistoinen-Sarmanto-Laine-Hietanen) to a quintet and invited trumpetist Bertil Lövgren to join. Also Juhani Aaltonen is questing on two tracks. Odysseus is an excellent, youthful package of forward-thinking jazz played by ambitious young j…
Immediate Music III
Olavi Louhivuori Presents "Immediate Music III" - A Boundary-Pushing Musical Triumph with drummers Glenn Kotche and Tony Buck
Think - Tank - Funk
Not funk music but a demanding, innovative piece of chamber music and psychedelic avant-garde jazz, Think-Tank-Funk is an unusually daring album to appear in 1973 in Finland. Half-impossible to find on vinyl, the Svart reissue comes added with a fresh interview with Helasvuo.
Esa Helasvuo, known for his long musical career encompassing choral music, orchestral works, soundtracks and children's music, had years of composing experience under his belt already (he had, for example, written the Vesa-…
Lähtö Matkalle
*2023 stock* "This band has a certain Finnish (and forestral?) nature, like e.g. Pekka Pohjola's music too. The composer is the guitarist Pekka Tegelman (who later wrote and played for singer Liisa Tavi among others, by the way). The sound is rather mellow, besides electric guitar the keyboards are in the key role. Lähtö Matkalle is progressive with longer compositions, the keyboardist had changed and some other new players arrived for this album - another reason for sounding a bit different. If…
Jazz Liisa 14
*200 copies limited edition. 2023 stock* "A great performance by the Nordjazz Quintet -- a cool mixed electric/acoustic combo that features sax and flute from Pekka Poyry, guitar from Nils Petter Nyren, keyboards from Ole Kock Nahsen, bass from Kjell Jansson, and drums from Petur Ostlund -- a combo who work on long tracks that are a nice extrapolation of some of the fusion modes explored by the Love Records label during the same time! The tunes here get especially soulful in the longer stretches…
Vesku Suomesta
*300 copies limited edition. 2023 stock* Actor/singer/flautist Vesa-Matti Loiri's debut album 4+20 was a largely instrumental piece of psychedelic jazz. The follow-up, Vesku Suomesta, from 1972, is more vocal-oriented but no less psychedelic. With guitar hero Hasse Walli, keyboard experimentalist Esa Helasvuo and free jazz guru Edward Vesala in the lineup and with the material consisting of Finnish folk traditionals, the outcome is an oddly captivating and unique set of vocal jazz caught between…
Mysteerien Maailma
A towering artefact of late 1990s ambient and electroacoustic music, resting at the borders of Finnish black metal, Svart Records’s long awaited, first ever vinyl reissue of Suuri Shamaani’s seminal album, "Mysteerien Maailma", emerges more than 20 years later as a stunning testament to the importance of the creative expansion to which it belongs.
I'm Here
*Limited edition of 500 copies* Drummer and composer Edward Vesala, the most internationally renowned jazz musician from Finland, was very keen on percussion instruments. Oddly enough, this broad and enduring interest is hardly evident on his albums.Whether playing on his own albums or contributing to other musicians’ work, Vesala played a standard drum kit most of the time. He hardly used external percussionists on his own albums either. And most of all: his music was almost never percussive, a…
Diversity
The grand old man of Finnish Jazz, Eero Koivistoinen, has not kept still in his old age. Far from it, he's played with rappers from the younger generation, Argentinian tango singers, you name it. The Eero Koivistoinen Quartet, onto its 10th year in existence, is his outlet for what he knows by heart like no one else - cool quartet jazz in which Eero is aided by younger luminaries from the scene. Alexi Tuomarila is on the grand piano, Jori Huhtala on bass and Jussi Lehtonen on drums.
Diversity p…
Hadd Mondjam El
Official remastered reissue of the raunchy Hungarian psych rock cult hit from 1973. Zalatnay Sarolta’s fourth album “Hadd Mondjam El’' has been a slavishly sought-after relic by ostrock purveyors and sample hunters since the 90s. Throughout her long career she’s been a reality TV star and a schlager hit singer loved nationwide. Her early albums, however, painted a different picture. “Hadd Mondjam El” was a commercial flop but its daring contents have stood the test of time, the album becoming a …
Ajatuslapsi
*300 copies. Turquoise Blue, long sold-out and few available * Esa Kotilainen’s Ajatuslapsi was a very moderate success at the time of its release in 1977 (on Love Records label, also responsible for the Sperm releases), but over the years its cult status has become immense. Svart Records presents the first ever vinyl reissue, with the mastering and cutting of the lathe supervised by Kotilainen himself.
Ajatuslapsi is quite a magical record. One of the first ambient synthesizer records ever in F…
Jappa: The Complete Jazz at the Polytechnicum Recordings 1967-1968
Svart Mondo presents Jappa: The Complete Jazz at the Polytechnicum Recordings 1967-1968 by Eero Koivistoinen with friends. By early 1960’s, jazz in its mainstream form had become the standard dance music for the student parties in high schools and several student union clubrooms in Helsinki. The Polytech union even organized matinée dances for high school students on Sundays. The change in the musical preference of young people’s dance music occurred with the arrival of British rock in the mid-s…
Nana
Drummer Edward Vesala was an early Finnish pioneer of avant garde jazz, and he managed to release this lovely LP that has to be considered the first proper Finnish free jazz album in 1970. The Vesala trio was supposed to be a quartet, but trumpetist Mike Koskinen fell ill, and the remaining exploratory trio (Vesala, saxophonist Juhani Aaltonen and bassist Arild Andersen) recorded the album in a short, fiery session. The album Nana is an absolute rarity as well as an absolute beauty. As with many…
Sielun Veljet
** Edition of 300 ** A celebratory, expanded reissue of the 1983 debut album Sielun Veljet. Originally printed on three LP sides, the fourth side of the album features only the song Valssi, previously heard on the B-side of the single, and a previously unreleased early live version of Taas hauk kasvaa (Again the hair grows), found in the band's archives and only later released on the studio album. The package comes with a 12-page accompanying booklet containing a history and photographic materia…
Horoscope
** Edition of 500 ** Horoscope is an Occult Jazz masterpiece from 1973, never before reissued on vinyl. In 1967, Matti “Rag” Paananen decided to compose his own vision of the Western astrological signs. Each one has its own composition on the 12-song theme album that was originally released in 1973. For the compositions he studied every astrological sign and made his own interpretation of how it would sound as music. Although the compositions were already made in 1967, they weren’t recorded unti…
The Devil's Cradle: The Story of Finnish Black Metal
Heavy hardcover book, approx. 500 pages. “The Devil’s Cradle: The Story of Finnish Black Metal” by Helsinki-based journalist Tero Ikäheimonen is a definite history of one of the most uncompromising and brutal music scenes in the world: the Finnish Black Metal. Based on over 50 interviews, the book unravels the story from late 80’s to modern days featuring such bands as: Beherit, Impaled Nazarene, Barathrum, Archgoat, Azazel, Diaboli, Darkwoods My Betrothed, Horna, Vornat, Thy Serpent, Wanderer…
Circus
Circus were a shining example of the creative explosion at the heart of the early days of Progressive Rock. A tight knit jazz-rock band that crafted high quality musical workouts, Circus mixed the heavier aspects of late 60s rock with the nuances of jazz modulations, folk, pop and even forays into psychedelia. Circus decided to focus less on the sound of the pop psych scene and joined the ranks of the more experimental progressive bands emerging during the 60s such as Soft Machine, Caravan, Colo…