One of the most
striking albums of the year is Born A
Trip by Mr. Peter Hayden, a shadowy five-piece from Kankaanpää, Finland.
So striking that
it had to be dug into with the help of bassist Lauri Kivelä and their drummer
Touko Santamaa, both interviewed here.
Born A Trip is their second album. The band released their
first record in 2006. On Born A Trip,
Mr. Peter Hayden have made a music so far out, so extraordinary that it crosses
genres to become one of its own. A single, 68-minute piece of music, it pulses
like the tidal ebb and flow.
As carefully
structured, yet still as fluid as Television’s “Marquee Moon”, it’s not a
stoner-metal stroll through texture but a psychedelic journey with shades of
Godspeed You Black Emperor and Glenn Branca. Its release makes them as
important to Finnish music – and music generally – as Circle. Few new albums
move the known so sharply into new, unexpected territories, but this is one of
these.
The album was
recorded in stages: first during a 12-hour, night-time session. Then they and
their producer Koiramato worked over six months to bring themes out,
adding and subtracting parts. The band describe it as “the soundtrack to your
spiritual rebirth.” It is the second part of a trilogy.
According to
Touko, the goal with Born A Trip was
to “stay determined. There was no let’s do this or let’s do that, mostly just
letting things occur through us and letting it all happen. There are symmetric
and asymmetric, tonal and atonal structures positioned in our thoughts.”
“Slowly, but
steadily we came up with parts and those parts melted into each other forming
new parts,” explains Lauri. “Suddenly we realised that we had this quite huge
piece of music in our hands. There was a conversation about the possibility to
divide the trip into few shorter portions, but we felt that if it wants to grow
and be like this, then we should let it grow and be just like it is meant to
be. So the album itself guided us through the process.”
“There are
orchestral elements in our music that some people might find similar,”
continues Touko. “Also some droning and such. Glenna Branca’s been mentioned before,
yes.”
“This genre thing
has been brought up often with Born A
Trip,” says Lauri. “The reason the album does not really sound like metal
or anything else is simply because we weren’t really aiming for metal or
anything else. It all comes out naturally. We do not know what it is but our
second album.”
The members of Mr.
Peter Hayden are from Kankaanpää in west Finland, which Lauri says is “another
slowly dying city, but a kind of a safe haven, a place to get back to and do
our thing in peace. Even though we are now spread out around Finland, our
rehearsal space has always been there. This city has given us something no
other place could ever have given - a chance to grow up in a place without a
music scene and stifling influences.”
Touko says “there
really is a sort of stillness around Kankaanpää and it’s even more dominant
nowadays. When we were kids the whole rural culture was standing strong. The
market day which was set up twice a week was throbbing with life. Now that all
that is getting slowly wiped off by this economic hustle and imbalance between
regions it feels like there’s even more silence and inertia available in
Kankaanpää. And it suits us fine.”
As to whether
being Finnish makes Born A Trip what
it is, Lauri says that “our way of working would be very different if we
weren’t Finnish, as it would be if we were from some other city. I do not
really think that the point is us being Finnish, but the truth is we are
influenced very much by the environment we have grown in. And in our case we have
had the freedom to pick our path before hearing too much musical influences.”
“The nature itself
should be noted,” adds Touko. “The wilderness around northern Satakunta (the region
Kankaanpää is in) is just compelling.
Ragged and deep, filled with boreal barrenness. My personal kindred spirit. All
yawning and swaying, impressive.”
Who is Mr. Peter
Hayden? “The name represents many things to us,” offers Lauri. “A source of
inspiration and energy, a guiding light on the horizon. Something we want to be
and are on the process to become. It reminds us of the strength we have within,
all the potential that is available when we work together, overcoming the
negative individualism and feeding ourselves to the entity that is our merged
minds.”
Listen to Born A Trip here.
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