Kimmo Pohjonen revisited

In February I went to a Kimmo Pohjonen concert.. called Animator It was quite amazing. He has been referred to as a Finnish techno accordion terrorist, who indulges in an extended passage of glossolalia which sounds like a group of mad monks doing Gregorian chants, while smacking their lips and undergoing electric shock treatment.

He came out dressed like a tibetan monk and danced weird dances while playing the accordion. Very wild stuff, with strange lightshows projecting images onto his body or accordion. The accordion when it was fully extended formed a miniature film screen onto which the images were projected, and at other times he extended the skirt of his monks robe so images could be displayed on it.

The press has this to say about him



"The dude on stage is twitching, eyes clenched shut. His head's full of bugs, full of tumbling ideas, full of God knows what. In his hands an accordion writhes and shudders. He lunges into it and shark-like, it snaps back at him as spotlights skitter and flash. He stumbles forward and trips off his pedestal, a drunk electrocuted in a hailstorm of noise. Eardrums are bombarded as one man, his squeezebox, his percussionist and a few pads 'n' pedals become a torrent of mantric sonic wizardry, at once avant-garde, ancient and electro-punk." (Musik magazine, England, July 2002)

It was not all a wall of noise. At times the music was soft and angelic and he would lower himself into a sitting position with his back to the audience and then very slowly lean back with tremendous stomach muscle control and lower the upper part of his body onto the floor, all the while playing the accordion. It was like somebody falling into deep water and being dragged down by a heavy weight. He would then spread his legs and his skirt would open up and images would be projected on it. He made slow undulating movements with his accordian while lying on his back and it was if he were a woman giving birth.

At one point he lurched about the stage like a drunk man or behaved like his arms and legs were being pulled about by a drunk puppet-master, and at this point the music had its roots in primative shamanic sounds from Lapland. His face was projected on a screen. A tattooed face, but he shook his finger at the audience as if to say that the image was not the real him. A new image appeared with matrix digital letters running down it, and again he insisted that this was not him.

This sequence was repeated with a few other images and when he did not appear to be getting through to the audience that the images we were seeing were not really him, he became frenetic and violent, The images of his head changed in rapid succession on the screen behind him, and they became like a flickering fire, dark and volcanic, hellish, and the playing became demonic and at one point he strode to the front of the stage and a spotlight shot up from under his robes and gave his face a gruesome tortured expression, and at the same time a spotlight was focused directly on someone in the audience, and he unleashed this barrage of sounds from his mouth that were not any recognisable language, but were quite frightening in their intensity. It was speaking in tongues. It was harsh and unpleasant. It sounded like a curse.

I sat there thinking I am so glad I am not under that spotlight. He then moved to centre stage the spotlight shone on him again and a fresh torrent of mutalated words spewed from his mouth, and again some poor soul had the auditorium spotlight directed full in his face. Performance, that is what it was. How do you get the audience on the edge of their seats, how do you raise the tension in the auditorium. How do you get people into a state of agitation and fear. You shine a spotlight on them and curse them with demonic words.

I thought that blessing is so much better than cursing. I thought prayer is better than oaths.

He moved to the left of the stage and the spotlight shone up through his skirts once again. What would I do if the light fell on me. I would stand up. I would shout back. "Give me a break Kimmo". I would shake my head and laugh. I would tell him to be quite, and take off that silly dress, and could he please take that spotlight out of my eyes. I think that is what he would have wanted... some audience participation, but as it was the spotlight fell on a Finn and he sat quietly and let Pohjonen cover him in blood curdeling screams. Frozen in the spotlight. That is the Finnish way.