Dark Easy? Wave Listening? Crypt jazz? You still have to invent your own genre for the Finn.
“Drifting away, I’ve been thinking of you”: Jaakko Eino Kalevi sings these words in the track (almost) of the same name, accompanied by an energetic beat that is carefully hidden with a camouflage of sweet background choirs and playful jazz patterns. This ambivalence between seemingly sweet melodies that are sometimes reminiscent of easy listening and a substructure in which this lightness is broken up again with all sorts of electronic journeys into space has always been one of the core trademarks of the Finn, who now lives in Athens.
On CHAOS MAGIC, the first album since his move, Kalevi lays out this brand essence even more openly. We hear excited hits that are based on dark wave and synth pop like “Hell & Heaven” or “Palace In My Head” (with Alma Jodorowsky – the granddaughter of the filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky), but in which there is always room for light. The artist himself says these recordings were spontaneous and simple; the last track is appropriately called “Let’s See How Things Go”. They’re going well, Jaakko, very well.