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Olli Aarni, "Muova"
Australia’s excellent Preservation label has quietly resurfaced with a pair of cassette/digital releases, my favorite of which is the latest from this Finnish composer.  Muova draws its inspiration from both old New Age tapes and William Basinski, which certainly provides a rough summary of Aarni’s aesthetic, but does not convey how wonderfully and thoroughly he manages to transcend those influences.  While I do love both Basinski and distressed tapes, I am not at all predisposed to either vintage synthesizers or New Age revivalism, yet Aarni has managed to use those unpromising threads to weave something quite beautiful and unique.
This is the first Olli Aarni album that I have heard, but he has quite a prolific back catalog of cassette releases behind him, so I may be a little late to the party.  In fact, he even has two other releases on Preservation under different guises (Nuojuva and Ous Mal), though neither sound much like Muova ("Plastic").  Having a shifting moniker has proven to be a historically excellent way to elude my attention.  In any case, Muova seems like a bit of a one-off stylistic divergence, though Aarni seems to be an especially game fellow when it comes to trying new things (2013's Koittaa aika is composed entirely of found sounds, for example).  This particular cassette consists of two 15-minute pieces built from a handful of simple synthesizer motifs.  While the aforementioned Basinski influence is amply apparent in approach, Aarni does not encroach upon his stylistic territory.  Rather, he just seems to have been awakened to the possibilities inherent in simplicity and endless repetition.  He also seems quite enamored with exploring the hissing and crackling textural wonders of old tapes, though he avoids using escalating degradation as a compositional tool.  Basinski and Aarni both use similar tools and start from very similar places, but they ultimately lead to very different aesthetics: Basinski's obsessively looping symphonies of melancholy and Aarni's hallucinatory and warmly beautiful floating stasis.
On the opening "Kirkas vesi" ("Clear Water"), Aarni creates a wobbly and shimmering reverie of looping synth swells, squiggles, and whimpers.  While very loop-centric, the loops are either long enough or spaced far enough apart to dissipate any sense of obsessiveness or forward motion.  Instead, all of the various components drift along in a gorgeously languorous pointillist shimmer.  I am particularly enamored with Olli's attention to texture, as the piece is so beautiful largely because it feels so quaveringly fragile and blurred.  Also, I loved how the more radiant and pastoral New Age motifs were balanced with a very effective and understated touch of bittersweet sadness.  There is a dark undercurrent at work that differentiates Aarni's work from its somewhat toothless inspirations. "Kirkas vesi" also works quite well dynamically, as its dreamy bubbling is made considerably more vibrant by its unusually swaying and see-sawing feel.  The second piece, "Tyhjä tie" ("Empty Road"), wisely avoids messing with that hugely successful template.  Much like its predecessor, "Tyhjä tie" endlessly repeats a handful of shaky, soft-focus motifs for the entirely of its duration with no obvious arc or evolution, settling instead upon a gently hissing, undulating, and dreamlike haze.  It is much less conspicuously synth-based, however, as its central theme resembles a slowed-down and pitch-shifted harp arpeggio.  Also, tape noise makes a bold step to the foreground as well: Aarni’s arsenal of hisses and crackles are every bit as important as the melodic components, giving the piece a strong inhalation/exhalation pulse and artfully masking/transforming the backdrop of field recordings.
While it is clear that Muova was intended as a somewhat modest release, it is something of a minor masterpiece of simple, understated beauty.  Superficially, these two pieces are composed of very little and just basically appear and disappear without much in the way of change or evolution, but making something this static and minimal work this effectively is a deceptively Herculean task.  Such a feat requires both delicate balance and an incredible lightness of touch, as the various loops need to be vibrant and compelling enough to hold my attention, yet unobtrusive enough to not get annoying when they endlessly recur (strong melodies do not work, but fragments do).  In that compositional regard, Aarni succeeded admirably with both pieces.  His real success, however, goes much deeper, as he was able to imbue his wobbly loops with both tender fragility and genuine emotion.  That is a very special thing indeed and Muova is a very rare achievement: the kind of album that I could happily listen to in an infinite loop for hours.
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