BAND OF THE WEEK: IAmber
Deep-riding, post-everything greatness from Finland.
When Teemu Elo, IAmber’s bassist, kindly got in touch with me offering his band’s new album ‘Mercurial Shakes’ for my listening pleasure (thank you!), he said something very interesting in his email, which I believe he won’t be mad if I share it with you guys. While hoping that “there could be interesting aspects in the tracks for someone looking for stuff with wide boundaries of influences,” which already is a good way to sum up what’s going on in this record, as it is indeed a pleasing mix of contrasting ideas, he then mentioned that “in this one review it is noted that the music is starting to be more and more ‘post everything’.” And while he was referring to IAmber in particular, you could take that and generalise it a bit further - for some reason we are sort of running out of cool ways to tag music with snappy expressions, and a lot of the different currents that have appeared mostly in this century have had to suffer the burden of being called post-whatever. As the years go by, I do hope we don’t have to resort to post-post-stuff (come on people, where’s the next or “grindcore” or “shoegaze”, or at least something that’s not as stupid-sounding as “truck-driving country”?)
Anyway, I digress, but it’s telling that it was IAmber who launched me into this little rant. Though not exactly newcomers (formed in 2011 already), this four-piece from Turenki - Teemo is joined by Olliveikko Silvonen on vocals/guitar, Antti Harju on guitar and Sami Korhonen on drums - is the sort to really defy any music writer to come up with a comfortable nametag for what they sound like. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not crazy music that swings from chamber hip-hop to electrogrind either, but the moody, cinematic way their songs slowly develop, in a post-rocky kind of way but with frequent shouty, roaring excursions into heavier stuff, partially explains the difficulty in “selling” this music to a wider audience that usually likes their stuff neatly catalogued and pigeonholed.
So IAmber have been pretty much flying under the radar for most international fans, with their previous releases ‘True Will Directs the Path’ (a 2018 EP) ‘Rueris’ (2016) and ‘Agalma’ (2014) not really talked about much outside their own scene, but ‘Mercurial Shakes’, released digitally last August (hoping for a physical release at some point - maybe someone will pick them up and reissue the thing properly, like it happened with the previous Finns we’ve had here on Band Of The Week) really sounds like a band coming into its own, crystallising the many influences they have into a solid whole that sounds just like themselves, the best possible influence you can end up having. My favourite song on the album happens to be one of the two released as singles, it’s called ‘Atavist’ and it’s sombre, kind of menacing though very atmospheric and rages out when it really needs to, an emotional rollercoaster that is a good summing up of the band’s approach to songwriting:
Interestingly, they describe themselves as “Deep Riders from Finland” on their Facebook page, which at least for me conjures up images of a sort of a desert-riding mystical Western kind of thing, from a place that at first glance has little to do with that imagery in geographical terms. But hey, Sólstafir have totally nailed the “ice cowboys” vibe, so why not? The other single they put out, ‘Atomist’, is more in tune with this, a more introspective affair, longer and almost psychedelic in the way that it ends up swirling around you and taking you in. Most of all, it’s a song that knows how to pace itself, which can be said of IAmber themselves too. You might notice they don’t have a super active online presence, or that they don't really feel the need to enter the rat race of a new album every year. As Teemu wisely states on the interview that you can find below, “the ride will just continue at its own pace.” Quite. So yeah, check out that song too:
With those two examples - and by all means go check out the whole album if you’re into them, it’s worth it - you can see what I mean about IAmber’s music being tough to describe, even if it’s nothing outlandish or completely unheard of. It’s a good sign of personality, which this band seems to have in spades. The lyrics are also worth a dive into, as they revolve around “the cyclic and repeating nature of Time and Life as well as the long-standing and ever more manifesting change in Nature’s state on our planet,” as the press release explains, and there is indeed a lot of food for thought in there. The best kind of food for thought, in my opinion - the one you can sing/scream along to, the most affecting way I can think of to have a message resonate.
That, or an exclusive interview. Yeah, that works too. Shall we?
It’s a good thing to see the look on peoples faces when we play after a bunch of stoner bands or something.
— Olliveikko Silvonen
Can you tell us a little more about the origins of IAmber, the main inspirations that lead to how you sound like, and your overall trajectory so far?
Olliveikko Silvonen (guitar, vocals): Each of us had several projects before IAmber, but they always seemed to fall short in terms of dynamics and depth. Our inspiration stems from various places and not just music. We always enjoy analysing cool pieces of art and try to tap into the emotions the original piece rose in us and implement some of it to our pieces. Of course there are a lot of bands that have affected the way our sound has formed, and not least of all bands like Neurosis, ISIS and Pink Floyd.
Teemu Elo (bass): We had all known each other for a long time before ending up forming a band, and quite soon we realized that this is a group that will work very well together and maybe find something relevant to say musically. I think it’s pretty clear that musically a lot of influence comes from the so-called post-metal-type sound, but as mentioned before, the inspirations are pretty diverse and the sound has always been evolving into something else. As one reviewer noted about the new album, it’s starting to sound more and more “post-everything”.
I like that, in a way, IAmber feels sometimes a little like a lost treasure from another era of music. Not saying you sound dated, at all, but I think there would have been many more bands to trace parallels to if you had appeared in the early 2000s, for example. Do you feel like a bit of an anomaly in today’s music scene?
Olliveikko: We don’t really consider our music in relation to other bands that much, but that subject does come up for example when lining up live shows. We do feel a bit out of place in almost every line up imaginable. But then again it’s a good thing to see the look on peoples faces when we play after a bunch of stoner bands or something.
Teemu: That’s a nice way of describing it, from that you could almost deduce that our sound has a timeless quality to it, heh. It is true that we feel like outsiders in many situations music-wise, but whether that bothers us at all is a different thing.
I guess that it also helps that, from what I’ve seen, your online presence seems very ascetic in a way. You exist on the usual platforms, but your communication isn’t based on being in people’s faces all the time with constant posts and photos and things. A certain old-school hardness in me likes that, it creates atmosphere and lets the music do the talking in a bigger way. Is this an intentional thing on your part?
Teemu: It’s intentional in a way, but maybe a more fitting way to describe it would be that it’s just natural for us. We are pretty introverted guys in that sense, so it’s not in our nature to be blasting stuff out all the time. And there is no point forcing things like that just for the sake of it.
Olliveikko: Wouldn’t say any part of our “brand” is that “thought-out”. We aren’t just that interested in doing things like social media. We like to compose music and play the outcomes live every once in a while. That's our thing. If not investing in things like online presence diminishes our recognition, that’s fine for us.
Though I can remember a couple of them, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I do think it’s still a little unusual for the Finnish scene to produce bands more or less within your sonic ballpark. How do you think your “Finnishness” reflects in the music you do, if at all?
Olliveikko: I think for many years there have been a lot of interesting Finnish bands and artists pushing from the margins. Most of them tend to lean on the darker side in musical thematics. Maybe that’s our Finnish side of it. But then again - we do have the lightness in our pieces as well. And it’s not always dark in Finland either.
Tell us about ‘Mercurial Shakes’ – what were your goals when you started writing this album, and what do you feel about it now that it’s out there?
Olliveikko: ‘Mercurial Shakes’ is not really a concept album, it’s more an album about a few key feelings and sort of painting different pictures with it. Feelings that needed to be let out but also recognized as something worth preserving, so we made songs about them. As long as the album offers a window to those places it serves a purpose. If not for anyone else then at least for us.
Teemu: I think one of the goals (as it always is when writing new stuff) also was to cultivate our sound and let it grow into its own direction, and I think this has been achieved to some extent. The vision on the album is pretty clear, at least for this moment.
The recorded versions of the songs are like photographs, they show the track like it was at that moment in time, but like subjects in a photo, they can change after the snapshot has been taken.
-- Teemu Elo
I love the dynamics on the album, from melancholy to rage, sung and screamed vocals, heavy passages and barely there subtlety, it’s quite a rollercoaster. What’s your usual method of writing? Is it hard to reach the final version of the structure of a song, when it feels like it’s finally transmitting what you wanted it to?
Olliveikko: For us, when composing music it feels like the music has always been there and we aren’t really even making anything up. It’s like removing layers of dirt from it. Once the piece is ready it feels like this is the way it was meant to be. Even if the outcome is novel and unusual. You just know it when it’s done. Or if it doesn’t work - kill it. The dynamic range is more a together-agreed thing. We want the music to mirror life as truthfully as possible and life can be very subtle at times and really intense at others. We want to use the whole palette.
Teemu: Yeah, usually we start from a few ideas, it can be some riffs or an atmosphere we want to reach and start going into it. The changes made in the song are pretty much based on intuition, what feels right. Suddenly you realize that the piece doesn’t need any more changes, it has been “revealed”, heh. Sometimes reaching this point is hard and occasionally very easy. Although it’s not always set in stone, we have sometimes mixed things up and played things very differently live, changing some sections of the songs etc. if we have found something new for a certain song after it has been recorded. We have sometimes talked about a notion that the recorded versions of the songs are like photographs, they show the track like it was at that moment in time, but like subjects in a photo, they can change after the snapshot has been taken.
Do you have any specific plans on what you will do/want to do now, armed with this great record?
Teemu: I guess we will do what we usually do, contemplate things for a while and then start working on some new ideas as they come along. We have been at this for a relatively long time (since 2011) so I think the ride will just continue at its own pace. We’ll see which direction it takes. Of course we plan to get some live shows going and if there are some entities that would be interested in releasing our music, that’s always a bonus. Actually regarding that we have some things going on behind the scenes, but more details on that when things are ready.
Find IAmber on Bandcamp, Spotify, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.