Islaja - Angel Tape

A Closer Listen

They say that when a loved one passes away the first thing to fade away is their voice. Something that once was familiar, available and comforting has now become a fleeting memory, a decaying sound, just as sound is always fleeting, decaying. Making recordings is our effort to memorise, make immortal, share and with the passing of time distort, control and own.

Islaja’s new release delves in the debris and the decaying memory of  a tape, originally from Kansas City, that in the mid-80’s found its way to the Finish religious circles and her mother’s tape player. Called the “angel tape”, the tape was widely bootlegged to serve as many members of the community as possible in order to experience the voices of actual angels singing.  Behind, the “angel tape”,  lies our wonder to believe that these voices existed and continue to exist and we can find comfort in them so that these mysterious and otherworldly voices are not lost. 

Merja Kokkonen’s (aka Islaja) fascination with the voice is widely explored in all her previous releases for Fonal and Ecstatic Peace even though in more song-oriented forms and paths. In the “Angel Tape” she marks a departure and exploration of the voice as a vast space in sound, a space of ‘mood and meaning’.  Behind the religious music, Islaja heard the frequencies of decay and distortion that to her mind enveloped all the mystery of the angelic.

The opener “Urvogel” sets the tone of the whole album, with its angelic vocalisations creating layers of archaic intonations to something lost,  sustained over dispersed piano. Not unlike the wings of a feathered creature, the sound becomes more expansive and more rough and distorted as we move over the edges of the piece until its sudden end.

In titles like “Pulpit Rising” or “Oh Divine” we witness Islaja’s  attempt to dismantle the blueprint of what could be modern ecclesiastic music in order to explore the inner workings of what lies beneath, shaping a spiritual journey without a particular religious etiquette; an aspiration to render an atmosphere and an underlying theme, a hidden message. Sparse church organ melodies and medieval-like monophonic intonations offer the listener a way into Islaja’s very personal and unique fascination with the “angel tape” as an object, as a myth and as a coherent concept that links all the pieces of the album together.

“Electus”  is eerie, cinematic and inaccessible, like its Manichaeistic-like reference while “Angel Tape” creates a depth that is sustained between rising notes that move, disappear, reverse and distort, reminiscing Badalamenti’s most enigmatic moments. As we reach towards the closure of the album, “Featherless” reveals what’s left behind the angelic, a fleeting distorted sound like tape hiss… Closer “Teresa’s Song” is almost like a homage to Lisa Gerrard and Dead Can Dance- a chant that circles around its centre, and as the axis becomes thicker and thicker, the voice slowly degrades and disappears, just like the angelic voices on the tape that gradually erases itself copy after copy. What is left is the longing to remember and to not forget. 

“Angel Tape” is perhaps in some ways a very bold and brave release from Merja Kokkonen aka Islaja that will offer to her dedicated listeners a very profound and quite layered listening experience that is well worth exploring. (Maria Papadomanolaki)