Finnish folk musician Amanda Aalto released her fourth solo album, Ikisanat, featuring many guests from the Pagan Folk scene.
Amanda was joined by Valter Pilke (Falter Eclip), who recorded the electric sounds for Routa; Joonas Kunnasluoto, Lauri Korhonen and Igor Gartzea (Illuriah), who performed background vocals for Valkea Kuolema; Anni Helenius , playing the cello for Varjot, being also accompanied by Lauri Korhonen’s growls; Christian Krizmanits, who helped with songwritting and throat singing for Raivo; and Corey Judd, co-writing and playing the tagelharpa for Musta Vesi.
Apart from being a musician, Amanda is also a producer, artist, photographer and editor of the Dark Folk website, Dark Folk Nation. In an article she wrote for the site, she shared the story behind the creation of the songs for Ikisanat, including the decision to release an album entirely in the Finnish language for the first time.
“When it comes to lyrics, this is the first album of mine that is completely written in Finnish. This was a really important aspect to me. I wanted to dig more deeply into my roots and also into Finnish folklore tales Kalevala and Kanteletar. I ended up borrowing some texts from these folklore tales in Kaiho (where I combined two poems from Kanteletar) and Musta Vesi (where I borrowed one poem from Kalevala) but all the other texts are written by me. The album ended up being the darkest and heaviest that I’ve ever written and I think it reflects on the couple the of hardest years that I’ve paddled through somehow. There are a lot of poetry like storytelling about nature, finding yourself and learning how to live with yourself and your feelings – partly it gets quite deep in couple of the songs but I tried to disguise all this in a mythical storytelling form.”
See also:
-
Akkajee releases new album: ‘Lastenkerääjä’
-
Anette Aga unveils 1st EP: ‘Skyggestrand Nøkkevatn’
-
Eldrim unveils new single: ‘Tru’
Credits
- All songs composed and written by Amanda Aalto except for Musta Vesi composed by Amanda Aalto and Corey Judd, Raivo composed by Amanda Aalto and Christian Krizmanits.
- Album recorded and mixed by Amanda Aalto in August – December 2020.
Links
Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
Spotify | Bandcamp | Soundcloud
