Artist: K.Ylikulju
Title: clayderman
Label: Milk
Catalog #: ep/lp release #8
Release Date: 1999/09/29
This long play shows both the technical and musical knowledge of Kyösti Ylikulju. There are hard and fast beats and great melodies combined in these tracks. Some are more based on the beat and the others on melody or both. This album is very good both in musical and technical sense. There are very nice melodies and harmony in many tracks (“garth&monkey” and “fat paavo (the chorus girl)” being good examples). Many tracks on this album are also mostly based on the drum beats and little rhythmical tricks or effects (Best of these are probably “tak-ap”, “eerikson” and the three mixes). “Lappi-inzoo” and “garth&monkey” are good examples of having both a great melody/harmony and well done drum programming. There are also some nice ambient tunes here: “vaimen/1 (intro abstract)” is the best ambient tune I’ve heard for a while and the untitled track at the end is pure ambient too.
“Vaimen/1 (intro abstract)” is the opening track of this album. It mainly consists of different sound effects (like speach or trains passing by) there’s also a nice little melancholy melody. This track is ambient music at it’s best.
“Fat paavo (the chorus girl)” has a very nice electric piano backing with some flute-like instruments playing melodies. The drums are something near to drum&bass beat with some filters at times giving the kick to the track. A very nice easy-listening tune.
“Garth&monkey” is certainly one of the best tracks on this album (it is very much to my taste at least). Mostly it’s melodies and it’s progression stand out. Most of Milk’s releases are very well done technically but the musical side is at times forgotten (which isn’t neccessarily a bad thing I think) – this tune is very good both musically and technically. The melodies and the harmony are great and the solo parts are just wonderful. The drums are fast and go very well along the tune. I just love this track. It has a heavy 70’s jazz/funk feel in it.
“äänen valtias (orig. it-edit)” starts with reversed bell loop (actually the loop goes on for the whole tune). This track is more based on the drums. There are very fast retriggering and fx tricks at times here. The speech samples dropped in at times give more edge to this track. I didn’t like this one as much as the first three tracks but this is also worth a listen.
“Lappi-inzoo” starts with 808-drum loops with nice timestretching and tempo changes. When the drums end there come the crazy story with the speech effected a bit (this part lasts for a minute or so). Then the tune’s formula goes upside down when the string melody comes. The strings (and other instruments) play a catchy melody (that you’ll be humming for the next couple of weeks). The drums here are very much compressed and distorted but fit in with the melodies very nicely.
“Garth&agony” is a very sad tune. The melody is the same as on “garth&monkey” but played on some kind of chromatic percussion and nice mellow pads. This is a nice tune that fits in the middle of this great album just perfectly.
“Tak-ap” is again one of the best tracks on the album. I liked this one so much that I even remixed it. This track is also known as “Numerical 6”. “Tak-ap” is mainly based on the drums and the beat tricks with heavy retriggering and pitch bends on the drums. The beats are the main reason for this being one of the best tracks on the album. There are also some melodies with strings and some sequences. But the beats are the main thing here.
“Lippone” consists of weird filtered beat loops and a filtered saw wave sample. The drums are hard resampled loops and are nicely effected (with hard compression and flange) at times. There’s not much really new in this track. Still worth a download.
“Eerikson” is a very fast mind fucking track. A mellow hunting melody makes you wait for some nasty beats. And the beats are very nice. Actually the beats consist of some filtered/distorted noise. The melodies are really depressing. I especially love the warmly distorted instrument that plays alone the end of the track. This is a great tune I think.
H.Kyllönen’s “äänen valtias (fuckcheese mix)” starts with effected speech samples and then the same melody starts as on the original edit. Then the same drum beat starts to play as on the original version. I begin to think is there anything new in this mix and then the distorted drum loops fade in. The track gets really nasty somewhere in the middle (I love the part where my head nearly exploded because of the noise terror).
Another mix by H.Kyllönen is of “lappi-inzoo”. “Lappi-inzoo (ayle001 mix)” has more new beats and melodies in it than the other mix. This one is more original I think. The beats are quite crazy at times and you really have to tune your mind when the original string melody and beats come somewhere at the 4 min mark. The new melody with it’s portamento and slight reverb is quite nice. This track reminds me of “circuit cat’s comfort”, an earlier milk tune by H.Kyllönen.
Er… I can’t say much about my own mix here. I took tak-ap’s original drum loops and built a new melody around them. Then I fucked up the original string loops with little scratching. I’m more pleased with the middle section with the beats changing again and again. “Tak-ap (ferguson mix)” ended sounding a little Aphex Twin’ish.
An untitled chill-out tune fits in at the end of this album just fine. Some kind of a pad plays this quite simple melody for the whole tune. Only the rhythmic effects and effects on the background change though at some point you realize that there are quite a few instruments along the pads playing as well. The reverbed and delayed drums are really nice (they come somewhere at 5 minutes) but the hihat like instrument might get a little annoying.
The whole album is download worth. But if you have a slow connection and don’t want to download for the whole day (and raise your phonebill) here’s my top 5:
1. Garth&monkey
2. Tak-ap
3. Vaimen/1
4. Lappi-inzoo (or the mix)
5. Fat paavo
You can also get Clayderman on CD. Just contact K.Ylikulju (below).
[93%] S.Louhela
Tracklist:
01 – vaimen/1 (intro abstract)
02 – fat paavo (the chorus girl)
03 – garth&monkey
04 – äänen valtias (original it-edit)
05 – lappi-inzoo
06 – garth&agony
07 – tak-ap
08 – lippone
09 – eerikson
10 – äänen valtias (fuckcheese mix) mix by H.Kyllönen
11 – lappi-inzoo (ayle001 mix) mix by H.Kyllönen
12 – tak-ap (ferguson mix) mix by S.Louhela
13 – 13
Artwork:
Front Cover
Back Cover
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