Item Description

”Music, just as a word or a symbol, has a quality of pointing outside itself. The pointers don’t seem solid and they keep changing over time. Just like the meanings of words alter and depend more or less on the user. Nevertheless this pointing outside oneself seems the most important function music has – even though it’s probably impossible to understand these processes thoroughly. We can study music theory but can we ever study the mechanics of these pointers? Some ancient texts and traditions suggest that all things in movement are unreal, and that the only thing being absolutely real is the unmoving background, which is ultimately the perceiver. In this context music is not real at all since it is in constant movement – perhaps even more than any other art form. Even in the case of recorded music the circumstances for the listener are never quite the same. Who knows, maybe the tiny molecules in the air are dancing in different order today than they will tomorrow. So at least two different features make music seem very unstable and illusory: it takes the attention outside itself and indicates something other than itself and it is in constant movement. These very same characteristics might be the foremost reasons why music is so often found captivating.

The story of Solar Unity Ensemble began somewhere around 2014 when Ijäs and Niemelä met at an art school on the West Coast of Finland. The first actual recordings the duo made had to wait quite a few years and they are also included here, the more acoustic ones called “Emergence” and “Mantra”. The more recent and the more electric approach can be heard in the second half of the record. As the listener might be able to realize from this album, is the very act of trying to capture space and feeling rather than creating solid song forms or repeating chord patterns – the act of including certain details, which indicate towards the illusory nature of music.

The title of the album “Upstream” suggests climbing or turning towards the creative source, the eternal continuum, whether one experiences its presence inside or outside. To fully immerse oneself in free improvisation – be it a solo-situation or with others – you get your musical toes dipped in a freely floating stream if you are lucky enough. Though sometimes there seems to be a certain amount of fear involved in this. Fear of letting rational mind-stuff go out of the door. Perhaps one definition of free music could be found when you’re learning liberty by breathing in and then breathing out one’s preconceived conditioning. Musician as a person is always entwined in these two polarities – the more baffled the better – whereas one’s core being is (and always has been) beyond them. Within this illusory veil search the unmoving background!”

Roope Niemelä – guitar, keyboard, double bass, electric bass, flute, clarinet, trumpet, violin, alto saxophone, piano, accordion, percussion
Henri Ijäs – soprano and tenor saxophone, piano, percussion