Radio Banana
by Aki Peltonen
ReR Megacorp, Thornton Heath, Surrey,
UK, nd
Audio CD, £11.50
Distributor’s website: www.rermegacorp.com.
Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Belgium
stefaan.vanryssen@hogent.be
The accordion has always been a difficult
instrument to use in experimental music.
There may be two reasons for that. First,
it used to be a ‘popular’ instrument,
more at home in the streets and cafés
of villages and cities than on the stage
of concert halls. Secondly, the sound
has a certain nasal flatness and is difficult
to manipulate; a ‘prepared’
accordion or an accordion played with
flatterzunge effects is difficult
to imagine. Apart from a few real virtuosos
— the name of Pauline Oliveras springs
to mind — hardly any avant-garde
musicians have used the instrument, and
even now that most prejudice against it
is probably politically incorrect, it
still isn’t widely used in pop, rock,
classical, contemporary, electropop, jazz
or any other genre apart from maybe folk
music. But the accordion is back. Coming
in from Finland, even.
It seems that Aki Peltonen wanted to make
sure that there is at least one rock/folk/free
jazz record that features an accordion,
an MW-radio, an orchestra of winds and
percussion and a moog synthesizer. In
five tracks, he waltzes through the basics
of several genres without ever losing
the essential character of the accordion
and the melodic nature of the music as
such from sight. The surprising thing
about this record is the ease and casualness
of the crossings and the combinations.
Whether the accordion is combined with
drums only or with the full ensemble and
an MW-radio, there is a certain unavoidable
logic to the whole. A logic that comes
from the undemolishable steadiness of
Peltonen’s playing and the unpredictable
but always tasteful reactions or interactions
of the accompanying musicians. Everyone
knows his place. Every instrument sticks
to its unique and well-defined role. Whether
it is in the lengthy ‘Finnish walz’
in the freejazzy last untitled track,
or in the variations on a simple theme
(track 3), there is a tangible sincerity
in the way the accordion stands out or
hides. It is, simply and solely, itself.
No effects, no transformations, no excuses,
only accordion. The moog, the radio and
the wind section don’t kneel before
it; they simply let it be itself.
Aki Peltonen has, as far as we know, not
recorded any previous material. He has
been working as a producer in his own
company in Pori, Finland.
