Esa Kotilainen - "Ajatuslapsi" 1977

I was recommended this by internet friend Pete when I started trying out Wigwam. I was very pleasantly surprised by this, their keyboardist´s solo album. The album title translates more or less as "A Thought Child" I think. I won´t say too much else, but read on...........

Esa Kotilainen - Ajatuslapsi
Love Records, 1977


















"By the 1970s, Finland had produced a number of interesting academic and avant-garde electronic music pieces, ranging from the electronic études of Bengt Johansson to M.A. Numminen's ear-razing experiments with digital-synthesizer pioneer Erkki Kurenniemi's "electric quartet". However, it was keyboard wizard Esa Kotilainen's Ajatuslapsi (LP Love Records LRLP 196) that really spearheaded the emergence of rock-oriented, Berlin-school synth music in the country. You can hear this on the album's centrepiece, the suite "Unisalissa" (In the Dream Hall) that spans its A-side. A few minutes into the piece, the harmony settles on to a single droning organ chord, over which a synthesizer slowly draws four-note melodic fragments that shine as incessantly as any mentally-disturbed jewel. Soon we have multiple synthesizer ostinati echoing across the Rubycon while the spooky organ and string-synthesizer's melodies prophesy a Phaedra-like tragedy. However, Kotilainen next goes beyond this familiar German space: most of the rest of the suite is taken up by a corrosive, Arabic-modal organ solo over the ominously trudging, buzzing and trilling synthesizer accompaniment. And as if to balance the electronic darkness of the piece, the brief coda has accordion playing a frostily folky melody, backed by that most Finnish of instruments, the kantele. On the B-side, "Avartuva nδkemys" (A Widening Perspective) is more an intricate sound-effect narrative than a fully engaging musical composition, but "Ilmassa" ("In the Air") is another hugely effective synthesizer meditation over a single organ chord. Kotilainen's work may lack Klaus Schulze's Wagnerian monumentalism or Tangerine Dream's atmospheric profundity. Instead its homespun production values, its modest instrumentation and its subtle folkloristic touches make it sound quite refreshing within a musical style that later has been followed, imitated, copied, remixed and sampled nearly to death with all the state-of-the-art electronic instrumentation modern technology has produced. It is derivative yet different enough to be interesting, if not earthshaking. Love Records' successor Siboney has been promising a CD re-release for years, but at the beginning of 2005 those were still just promises.
In addition to his prolific studio works and collaborations with the Lapp artist and author Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, Kotilainen has played with many Finnish progressive rock artists, including Wigwam and Jukka Tolonen. At one time he was the sole owner of a working Mellotron in the country. The white beast makes an appearance on his 1995 solo album Aamu joella - Morning by the River, but this album is more a showcase for his accordion and more about folk music than anything else. From 1999 on he has been the regular keyboard player for the reformed Wigwam."
From New Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive rock

"Esa Kotilainen (b. 1946) is known as a keyboard wizard and synth veteran, who provided his contributions to Wigwam's most popular album Nuclear Nightclub (1975), also as a member of the band's latest incarnation, which is still in business. Furthermore, Kotilainen has provided his services as a session musician for such as Tasavallan Presidentti, Jukka Tolonen, Hector, J. Karjalainen, Nils-Aslak Valkeapää and many more. He has also been a member of Neum.

Esa Kotilainen's career in electronic music started in 1974 when he expensively imported from Germany a MiniMoog, an instrument rarely seen in Finland those days. During this era Kotilainen was playing gigs on a ferry called Finnhansa, which sailed between Helsinki and Travemünde, and paid for the instrument 6.100 Finnish marks: the price of a small car those days. The first gig with Kotilainen's Minimoog was creating sound effects for the soundtrack of Spede Pasanen's film comedy Viu-hah-hah-taja (1974), and the first music recording was obviously for the solo album Robson of Frank Robson.

Kotilainen's new career as a synth wiz got him loads of offers for background music in commercials after which his career was guaranteed in progressive bands like Wigwam, who were after electronic sounds generally favoured by the prog genre. Kotilainen is also said to have in his collection a Mellotron (an analogue predecessor of samplers, using pre-recorded tape loops played with a keyboard), perhaps the only one in this country.

Ajatuslapsi CD features as bonus tracks two versions of 'Matkaaja' ("The Traveller"), a 1978 commissioned work from Kotilainen for the Finnish National Ballet. The CD booklet also includes English liner notes by Pekka Laine, where Esa Kotilainen shares his insights on the album's origins.

Artist: Esa Kotilainen
Title: Ajatuslapsi
Cat.no.: LRCD 196 (original LP: LRLP 196)
Re-release year: 2008 (original LP: 1977)
Tracklist:

1. Unisalissa ("In a dream room")
2. Avartuva näkemys ("The mind broadens")
3. Ilmassa ("In the air")

CD bonus tracks:

4. Matkaaja (1978) ("The traveller")
5. Matkaaja (1978) Kaiutettu versio (= A version with echo, 2008)

Album credits:

Esa Kotilainen plays on the album: Mini-Moog, ARP-2600, Vox StringThing, Fender Rhodes, Kouvola Casotto, kantele, Hammond B3, Leslie 251 & 145, Binson Echo, MXR 90 Phase, MXR 100 Phase, Maestro Phase Shifter, Foxx Wah Wah pedal, Indian bells, Farfisa organ, Polymoog.

Recorded by Jukka Teittinen at Alppi-studio, mixed at Finnlevy Studios, Helsinki, summer 1976.
Cover by Kari Sipilä." From pHinnWeb

This I also found on pHinnWeb´s blog post, even though I don´t understand Finnish, I enjoyed it:-)


And apparently this is what he´s up to these days:


Fans of early Popol Vuh, Cluster, Tangerine Dream, J.D. Emmanuel, Terry Riley, Harmonia, Brian Eno, Wigwam, Tim Blake, etc......

FILL YOUR EARS!