Well we’ve covered 'Steve Buscemi’s Dreamy Eyes', so it feels only right to move on to the equally brilliantly named ‘Lauri Porra Flyover Ensemble’, who’ve recently released a new instrumental based album ‘Dust’, including a single ‘Matter’, which particularly caught our attention.
Finnish readers in particular may be aware of Lauri Porra, as he is a well established musician, composer and collaborator, with an extraordinary musical mix of musical experiences behind him. Not only does he come from a family which includes famous Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, but he then graduated at the Helsinki Pop Jazz Conservatory, has had compositions performed by renowned orchestras (inc the Finnish Radio Orchestra), as well as playing bass in Finnish metal band ‘Stratovarious’.
Normally we wouldn’t set out quite so much of a history, but all of this is important because the breadth of musical inspirations are very obvious in the new album ‘Dust’ – from the highly enjoyable and progressive rock based ‘Soothsayer’ (just listen to the opening really loud) to the softer and sometimes jazz influenced ‘Abeyance’, and then again to the classical tones of ‘Dust’, which opens with brass before introducing a lovely piano – and all accompanied by experimental and sometimes ‘world’ music influences. But the highlight to me is ‘Matter’, a pulsing heartbeat quickens, subtly at first before it races forward, all accompanied by the most beautiful and instrumental arrangements, developing and crescendoing to a huge climax. ‘Intravenous’ is a huge mix of sounds, electronic, brass and electric guitar with influences apparently from the 1650s to the 1970s, before ‘Dust’ ends with the thoughtful ‘Phase 2’.
My biggest gripe with ‘progressive music’ is that very often it is not truly ‘progressive’, not innovative or interesting enough to resonate with me, and certainly not a wide audience range. ‘Dust’ has such a wide range of influences, and written to such scale that it is both entertaining and captivating listening, whilst also challenging you to listen to music in a different way. And when Lauri Porra really hits the mark, as he does in ‘Matter’, the result is is pretty breathtaking. We really hope everyone will give ‘Dust’ a good chance.
Visit him at his website here.