Eero Koivistoinen & UMO Jazz Orchestra – Arctic Blues (2016)

I normally like the jazz from the 1950's and 60's the most. That was a time when artists like Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck and Herbie Hancock and Cannonball Adderley made their best albums. However, more recently there have been many new jazz albums that I've enjoyed immensely. Many of these bands, artists and albums have come from Finland. I don't know what is behind this, but Finland has currently a great jazz scene and whenever I go to Finland nowadays, I try to buy some Finnish jazz. Arctic Blues is an amazing album that I got for my Christmas present last Christmas. This album is on three vinyl records and every time I listen to it, I like it even more. The album lasts for nearly two hours, but I wouldn't leave anything off. In some ways, I like to compare this to the amazing Kamasi Washington album that came out the year before.



Eero Koivistoinen is a saxophone player who has had a long and great career in Finnish jazz music. UMO Jazz Orchestra on the other hand is one of the most well known big bands in Finland. They have some of the best musicians in Finland. This collaboration sounds amazing for anyone who is a fan of big sounding orchestrated jazz and of course a fan of excellent jazz saxophone.

The sounds on this album are very organic and pure, which I really like. I don't like it too much when jazz musicians start playing around too much with effects and electronic sounds. On this album, you can hear all the instruments like they are meant to sound. In some ways, I've become a bit more purist whilst living in London and I like authentic instrument sounds more nowadays. This goes specifically for jazz.

I grew up in a household where we never listened to jazz. My father didn't really like jazz. He did however, listen to some progressive rock, that is not too far from jazz, so I always wondered what that was about. It kind of turns out that he just doesn't really like horns that much. It's strange, but I'll accept it. As a teenager, I had played bass for a few years, but I had never truly had good bass teachers, so I was thrilled when I got accepted to take classes at Ebeli, a pop and jazz school in Espoo, Finland. My teacher was one of the best jazz bassists in Finland. He plays bass in famous Trio Töykeät. Through this experience I ended up playing in some jazz bands in the school and being a roadie at April Jazz festival. After these experiences, I've always had interest towards jazz, but I feel like it has really magnified in the last few years.

I'm quite terrible in analysing jazz in writing though, so I'm just saying that if you like 50's and 60's type of jazz and big bands, do yourself a favour and listen to this album, because this is pure gold. I would really love to see something like this played live, because jazz sounds even better live. But of course, listening to this album on vinyl is really great as well.

Listen to the album on Spotify.