Retkikertomuksia
1. Kuudentoista kautta
2. Kappalainen
3. Tiikeri
4. Kuninkaiden valtakunta
5. Lukkarista talonpojaksi
6. Tästä eteenpäin
7. Virkamies tien päällä
8. Viimeinen kerta
9. Älä hätäile
10. Unessa olin toinen mies
Barl Fire Recordings, 2007, CD-R
Ville Forss' Moskiitto alter-ego returns with his most acoustic based opus to date. Out go the prepared electric-guitar and cavernous organ drones, to be replaced by creaking bowed and scraped strings, taking the listener out of the caves and into dark snow-clad forests, with a sawing and clattering free-folk sound closer in spirit to his fellow countrymen Anaksimandros and Vapaa. The album features cover art by Forss himself, is housed in vinyl slip cases and is limited to 100 copies.
"More soil-based atmospheric material from the young Finnish talent. Prevail here folk bow instruments. Very strong forest, shamanic spirit."
"Another mysterious Finnish troubadour, Ville Forss aka Moskiitto, explores a moaning creaking acoustic ambience, a clattery free folk wilderness, much like his countrymen Avarus, Anaksimandros and Vapaa.
Simple
muted guitars strum and shimmer beneath a forest of sawed violins and
bowed cellos, creating a dreamy, ramshackle stumbling acoustic folk. A
haunting assemblage of scraped strings and mumbled buzz and wheezing
reed instruments. Lengthy overlapping melodies unfurl into deep drones
drone and ambient drifts, majestic and strangely stately, like some
ceremonial ritual. Reverberating steel strings are the framework for
the whole disc, their overtones spreading out like ripples in a pond,
above which flutter mournful melodies and abstract sonic shimmers. At
one point accordions drift in, their melodies floating above a tangle
of stretched out guitar melody. Very blissfully rustic, like sitting
around some crackling campfire deep in the forest, the music slowly
shifting and changing shape as various travellers arrive and produce
their own unique musical offerings. Nice." [Aquarius Records]"Retkikertomuksia presents us with a collection of eerier, barren and often awarkward avant folk, come improvised sawing and sour droning tracks. That wails and moans of dead winter husks and bitterly cold melancholy cloud-ness nights.
The main use of instrumentation seems to be guitar and possible violin or some other kind of string based interments. Most of the tracks appear in the same way with tight sawing and grating string work, that offers very little in the form of conventional or pleasing melodies. A few of the tracks do offer up bleak & pleasing grim drone atmospherics that are underpinned by eerier melodies trails like blood running through snow. One of the stand out moments here comes in the shape of one of those tracks entitled Tästä eteenpäin, which introduced by a twanging string element under laid by a sinister midnight in a frozen ghost house drone, you can almost see you breath as the track slides sourly out, almost sensing dark eyes watching your every move.
A barren often jagged and difficult collection of tracks, which often shows traces of dark angular beauty." [Musique Machine]"Rather different to any previous Ville Moskiitto releases, on this cdr he creates his wintry folk-ish soundscapes from all acoustic sounds - scraped strings, recorder, guitar, melodica and primitive percussion. Some of the tracks are minimal repeated tunes, so intimate you feel like an eavesdropper. Others are hugely atmospheric bowed drones. Lovely stuff." [Boa Melody Bar]
"Ville Moskiitto with Retkikertomuksia. .. sounds like my sister when she was given a violin at 7 and the whole family encouraged her to give up by 8. Random violin experimentation. Hey they're from Finland and Alex is translating it for me. Tiikeri means Tiger and the things called campfire stories or something like that. Its got quite nice as now as we've got dueting recorders. I say dueting in the loosest sense as its all improvised." [Norman Records]
