It’s difficult to imagine a more enigmatic release. No band name or album title on the sleeve. Luckily a web address for the label and I now know what I’ve been listening to for the past few days is by an assumedly Finnish group called Prokuristi. And yet this fact leads to very little new information either: “Pure hypnotic psychedelic riffing!”, which actually turns out to be somewhat incongruous with the music contained within.
“I” certainly begins in this vain, with hypnotic guitar lines multiplying over each other in a manner particularly reminiscent of the more well-known Finnish band Circle. Yet at around the ten minute mark of the one long piece making up the CDR everything changes. Instead of the overpowering psychedelia you might expect there is a lone guitar, heavily reverbed, immersing itself in its repetitive patterns over a softly lilting drone. There is an intricacy in the guitar work that cannot help make me think of a few Chicago post-rock bands circa 1995. “I” isn’t nearly as loud and chaotic as Wooden Sherpa would seem to like you to think, it is considered in its execution, if a little inconsistent. At another point the disc takes a distinctly weird turn towards folk as murmuring electronics bubble beneath a clear and repetitive guitar line that recalls the avant-garde Americana of Loren Mazzacane Connors.
While there’s nothing specific to be faulted in the disc’s execution it seems somehow unrealised. There are good ideas here, but too often they fade out before they really get going only to be replaced by something remarkably similar. 6/10 --
Tim Gentles (30 June, 2009)