This year I found myself really liking many of the more psychedelic releases among which the usual prog, jazz, and death metal that I often put in these lists. However, every year has its potential for both good and bad, and what has been constant this year as always is that amazing new music has been released. It is said by many and will be said by many more that this year has been a crazy one. Each of our staff members will share their own lists, here is the list of Samuel Järvinen.

Kairon IRSE! will likely never attain those coveted stock options but with a little pagan divine intervention, they will be digested by the sky and spit out as a spectacular crest of stardust strewn across the galaxy.Now that the year 2020 is coming to a close, we at Tuonela Magazine, want to share what releases we enjoyed the most. As Polysomn ends my sadness returns but at least my vision is mildly augmented by the record’s fairy tale aesthetic. The album may not provide us with blueprints for utopia per se but Polysomn’s esoteric meandering through hallucinogenic rock and blurry jazz is just as virtuous. What is so enticing about Polysomn is its unabashed weirdness. That is, we need permissive access to kaleidoscopic starways. While these instructions are valuable, what is also immensely important right now is escape. In our current apocalyptic cultural moment there is, understandably, a sizable amount of didactic art and media urging society to diverge in one direction or another. The song is almost out of place insofar as it’s a rare moment of cogency but it’s a melodic haze that massages the intense kinks from our necks that have come from the headbanging and entranced head rolling. Juxtaposing the sonic tantrums, “Mir Inoi” is a mellow hum of jazz.

As the jam enters its fifth minute, I want to dissolve into a cascade of neon purples and pinks, I want to devour chlorophyll and radiate asteroids of seafoam. “Altaãr Descends” is haunting and beautiful and makes me opine the fact that I, like every other organism, am bound to biological and physical constraints and I have to go to work so that I can rent the place where I sleep and the food I need to sustain myself so I can sleep and go to work and repeat the cycle again and again. “Welcome Blue Valkryie” is an enormous storm of shoegaze guitars and vocals that gorgeously drown beneath the fuzz. This will be the last time Polysomn allows us to experience our terrestrial reality. Soon, however, the earthly textures evaporate into galactic distortion, taking us from our yard work to snowy mountainous peaks and up to the cosmos. The record begins with clean dad-rock guitar riffs on “Psionic Static,” which are ripe for the innocent necessity of weekend yard-work. Kairon IRSE!’s Polysomn is a romp of psychedelic adventuring and as novel as a bag of ketchup-flavored potato chips from Canada or a hedgehog cafe. You turn it all down because your calling is to create wildly esoteric, multilayered worlds. The one with the grandiose holiday party where Bon Jovi and Sir Mix-A-Lot perform songs that everyone knows. Kairon IRSE! makes the kind of art that generally doesn’t exist in America, at least not organically or without societal pushback and parents whose faces sink as you declare that you’ve turned down the job offer at the office, the one that they pulled so many strings to land you, where you might one day get a corner office and stock options. This is why, at least in this harsh moment, Finland’s Kairon IRSE! is but a chimera to so many. However, that robust and egalitarian vitality is surely a byproduct of a deeply-rooted ideology that allows its populace to imagine extensively and wildly and to not fear such an ascent onto the astral plane, because should the ethereal sojourn end abruptly or without fruitful return, the material conditions that are inherently necessary to forging on-healthcare, education, sustenance-are promised to all, serving as a bulwark to nagging pragmatism. I’m not even talking about the region’s laudable high quality of life, where arts are well-funded and teachers are compensated handsomely. Scandinavia can seem like an exotic place from this side of the world, and not just because it has the expansive arctic terrain of Lapland or because mysticism involving elves and sacred bears is an ever present part of a society, which is also bursting with modernity. It’s a whimsical trip but I am left melancholic as the album ends because I know I can’t exist in its world. Listening to Polysomn is as enchanting as it is heartbreaking.

Kairon irse pitchfork