Casting Musical Spells “Stillness” is not a term typically applied to percussion. Stuff gets hit, walloped, thrashed, pounded, and otherwise pummeled, which suggests motion and dynamic kineticism. But on her debut solo album Toinen/Other [Bandcamp], Finnish experimental-percussionist Minna Koskenlahti explores minimalist, dream-like vistas of atmosphere and emotion. Like a surrealist film director, she utilizes space, mystery, and, yes, occasional bombast as characters in her solo-percussion compositions. To create the sonic landscapes for Toinen/Other, Koskenlahti used just two percussion instruments—a frame drum and a Spanish tambore—but she also called into service metallic objects, plastic, paper, and a whistle. With these bits and pieces, she conjured a whole bunch of cinematic moments: Ominous finger scratches (“Havittaja/Destroyer”), soft-to-explosive dynamic shifts (“Tunto/Sense”), sorrowful groans that sound like a ship breaking apart as it sinks into the ocean (“Varjostaja/Shade”), a percussive “conversation” of questioning and affirmation (“Massa/Mass”), silence punctuated by chilling brush work (“Pura/Unsettle”), and […]

September 2021 Issue