Slowhill - Finndisc (2002)

Slowhill is a Finnish collaboration between Tapani Rinne (his surname means 'Hill' in Finnish) and Vellu Maurola, a.k.a. DJ Slow. The former is a saxophone player known for his experimental ambient jazz band Rinneradio. The latter is a music producer and a DJ. Out of this collaboration comes a really unique sounding album combining jazz, ambient and electronic beats. The album was awarded the Blue Note label as well. This is the first electronica record in Finland to receive such honour. There are some noteworthy appearances on the album as well, such as the hip hop artist Paleface and producer Kalle Chydenius playing the bass. I don't think this album was very well known in Finland, but I can be quite proud of my native country for releasing stuff like this. Sometimes genre mashups can go horribly wrong, but this one is a great success.



I don't have many other records that would sound like this album. The closest I can think of is Portico Quartet. I don't know if I had even heard about this album if it wasn't for an old friend of my parents, who has been an active record collector an music enthusiast all his life. He had heard that I was learning to play the bass in a jazz school around the time when this album was released and he gave me this album when he was visiting us. I have also gotten another excellent jazz album from him. I'm really glad about this present as i really like the album, but it's not something I would've probably known to buy myself.

The album starts with a slowtempo song SlowJazz, which mostly consists of atmospheric saxophone with loads of echo and some slow electronic beats. This is followed by a quite different sounding song Super Blue, which has quite big sounding electronic soundscapes with rhythmic bass in the background. Rinne's saxophone soars high above it all magnificently. There are also some simple vocals sung through a distorting effect. Positive is run mainly on it's bass line and there's some rapping in the song going over a loop of one sentence about a perfect day. Fishbass Fusion is one of my favourite songs on the album. There are some beautiful synth sounds with lots of air and electronic record scratching sounds on top of a strange, almost reggae-like bass beat. Just a Phrase has a proper funky bass line with excellent drum beats and rock organs. As a bass player I really do appreciate the bass in this song. Valo makes things a bit more ambient again, giving air to Rinne's beautiful saxophone. There's bucket loads of reverb in the sax. Yesterday Star has some dark sounding melodies and a Finnish hip hop star Paleface rhyming in the slower bits. Small Stone starts with drum beats and sharp electronic sounding synth riffs. The beats remind me of lounge music that is being played in hip hotel lobbies where people work with their Macbooks. Fragonardo has almost prog-rock style rhythms and beautiful use of bass. The album ends with Song for Eetu, which is more about sounds and production gimmicks than songwriting.

I don't think there are any music videos made from this album. At least I couldn't find any. That's kind of a shame, because I'm sure some quite cool stuff could've been made to illustrate this music.

I rarely intentionally listen to this album anymore, but whenever it comes on in my shuffle, I remember what a great album it is. It's just so different from the other stuff I usually listen to. This album is also a good example of what you can do with production. In terms of songwriting, this may not be the most ingenious album, but the sounds are so carefully laid down that it makes for an absolutely pleasurable listening experience.

Listen to the album on Spotify.