ALAMAAILMAN VASARAT

Finland's experimental instrumental guerrillas Alamaailman Vasarat ('The Hammers of the Underworld') have been cheerfully avoiding any definitive categorisation of their music for a decade and a half. Traces of tango, klezmer, jazz, psychobilly, cabaret, circus music, progressive avant-garde, heavy trash metal and sinister Finnish melancholia are steamrollered flat into shiny new roads that lead back to their mythical homeland of Vasaraasia, where all this makes perfect sense. Complex arrangements are rattled off with jaw-dropping precision on an armoury of instruments including multiple brass and reeds, two multi-effected cellos, pump organ, drums and a rare contrabass saxophone called tubax. In the course of one piece it's possible to be reminded of Benny Goodman, a Balkan wedding party, Black Sabbath, Tom and Jerry cartoons and Frank Zappa, who once famously asked: does humour belong in music? Yes it does. from www.womex.com