Louhi

Description

In the world of Pharaoh Overlord, few things are ever what they seem. This band is less composed of tricksters or troublemakers than of intrepid obsessives whose musical instincts take wild and winding paths. Today, freshly emerged from italo-disco and synth-pop, they have launched another even more powerful statement into the universe. Louhi is a thunderous and majestic epic of joyful repetition and power that shakes the earth. A monolith of minimalist rock with two tracks forged from guitars, synths, and hurdy-gurdy, inspired by the eternal influence of Tony Conrad's Outside The Dream Syndicate and Faust, and built around a single riff and a single melodic idea, it builds and evolves towards formidable peaks of elemental intensity. Luminaries and constant compatriots in the headspace of Pharaoh Overlord have been recruited for this journey into the ether. Longtime singer and collaborator Aaron Turner (SUMAC, Isis, Old Man Gloom) and Tyneside maverick Richard Dawson were equally eager to come aboard, the former adopting a spontaneous and improvised approach to his vocal parts, and the latter largely playing a composed part of a guitar chord. Yet, whatever paths Pharaoh Overlord takes to reach their destination, a common theme is the distorting singularity of the riff and the mantra, and the temporal disorientation it can provoke reflects the broader concepts of this record, which takes traditional folk elements and transports them into the band's singular time machine. "This is our 25th anniversary this year, and from time to time, we hear wishes that if only we could play more of the things we did twenty years ago or more," Jussi and Tomi recount. "We completely understand that. One could say we used Louhi to reset ourselves, so we can move forward again into the future." Aaron puts it differently, evoking simplicity in chaos - "The world of Pharaoh Overlord is magical - each album is an invitation to enter this place and revel in it..."