Finally restocked: Tsembla's outstanding faux-gamelan and homemade ethnodelic fantasies from Finland’s Ikuisuus label "The cicadas rub their legs, singing as if sucking on inhalators, when past the great willows I see a dam resting deep in the shelter of the trees. The shadow of the dam, a dark cloak glowing green, spreads over the branches of the trees and far across the grass, transforming the yard beyond the road’s edge into an odd province ruled by frogs and mosquitoes that gradually slides back into being a harmless lawn. You can hear the sounds of the beasts from even further away. I scurry closer through the thicket and see how dragonflies and spotted butterflies split the ever-changing gauze of sound that the flies weave around the smell. The pool festers, simmering like green watery jelly in the grip of the banks. In the middle of the warm thick slobber you can trace some lazily undulating decomposing plants and, on top of them, the great slime kings. The bullfrogs are gathered there, and their coarse croaking sinks heavily into the tussocks’ threads, their necks pulse as they let out their fat notes over each other, random bass choruses, their big bellies trembling in yellow and brown.
The slap and plop sound like obscene threats, the bellowing cutting through the air like a foreign language. The females lay their eggs in the dam, hundreds of little eggs, of which the jelly – the male knows – does not loosen its grip until the spawn turns into tadpoles and the tadpoles into younglings. From the road comes the sound of a car, it slows down. I step back and look to the road: the scream of the breaks, highway dust and music sounding faintly through the coachwork.
A man pushes his head out of the window and the tune comes through clearly. He shouts over the din of the radio, through the intoxicating croaking: “How far to Garden Street, to the party?” The music blends with the sounds of the dam and the feeling that the whole slimy species is gathered for some fantastic purpose. -- Niko-Matti Ahti" label press
