Sounding like a deranged pagan ritual or Jandek meeting Nico at a Hermann Nitsch blood orgy, Islaja is as tripped out and mysterious as it gets. Primitive claw hammer guitars, bells, tape hiss, crazy random-sounding noise, and harmonium-like organ sounds back up Islaja's multi-tracked and beautiful beautiful beautiful witchy disturbed vocals.
There's a dark, haunting quality to this album that reminds me of a night spent watching Last Year At Marienbad and being tracked by a playful coyote one moonlit night on Norwich Mountain. I can't stop thinking that I'm listening to a field recording of the sort of Scandinavian pagan ritual that Burzum and his Odinist buddies were probably dreaming about as they burned Norway's churches. Hell, if Islaja were singing at my witching circle, I'd probably feel enough Aryan passion to go burn down a church myself.
And to think my friend Shary is over in Finland seeing Islaja and her Fonal friends live as we speak... oh! jealousy could get the better of me.
