Nyt kolisee! - album introduction text from the cd leaflet (by Paleface) - English translation only

In the spring of 2013 I ran into J. Karjalainen (Jukka Karjalainen) and Janne Haavisto on the backstage of the coast/beach stage of Ruisrock. They had just played an ecstatic show and the festival audience had embraced the sound of Karjalainen's new album. We were talking about how this banjo playing guy (Karjalainen) had came back from the Appalachian Mountains and returned to his electronic band sound (electronic vs. acoustic, not electronic as in the music genre). At some point Janne joked about how the drum and bass grooves of the album Et Ole Yksin (engl. You're Not Alone) include "a surprising amount of hidden hiphop". That stuck in my ear... That conversation was continued throughout the summer on other festivals' backstages. The idea to flip the entire album into Finnish hiphop was born. I promised to take the lead. I wrote a list of rappers and beat makers I was hoping to take part in the album. A total of 24 MCs and 8 producers took part in making the album you're holding right now. This is the Finnish hiphop generation's salute to Jukka. You're not alone!

Deep down, J is a blues guy & first and foremost a songwriter, a lyricist, a story teller. His texts have guided and shaped the Finnish state of mind for three decades now. Finnish rap has slowly matured from a small group's hobby to an integral part of Finnish mainstream music and popular culture. Rappers have gotten the prestige and credit they deserve. Now different generations of men shake hands and work together.

The hiphop culture was born 40 years ago in New York. It's roots reach much further, however, to Western Africa and the cotton fields of the Deep South. Like Eric Burdon sang back in the day: "It's all meat from the same bone". We gave the producers the studio tapes of the original songs and the freedom to work with them. Now, Jukka's vocals and instrumentals of the songs could be chopped, scratched and modified into anything new they desired to make out the them. The songs were allowed to be reborn out of happiness, like Mennyt Mies (a Karjalainen song, engl. "A Gone Man"). In the beats of the album, you'll hear echoes of old school hiphop style heavy use of samples, modern Memphis sound, dancehall reggae rhythms and dubstep. Several worlds meet on the album. Organic and electronic. Modern and classic. Helsinki and Kingston. Finland and Angola. In the meeting point of cultures, something exquisite is always born.

Reima Kampman's side personalities are familiar to rappers. (Reima Kampman was a Finnish psychiatrist, who specialized in side personalities. One of his works was called Et Ole Yksin and J. Karjalainen named his album after this piece of work.) We all have alter egos and creating is a subconscious process. In the raps, Markku's story is updated to the 2010s. Rappers, who grew up with Jukka's records, spit for the joy of spitting and on the other hand, incubate an existential pain. What is the place and the mission of our generation? At times we're in deep waters, at times we rock out to something lighter, but every syllable still hits the target. Nyt kolisee! (Doesn't translate well. And it's sort of a double. 'Nyt' means 'now', but 'kolisee' can literally mean 'to clang, to clatter', etc, or it can figuratively, in slang, mean, that you get something, you vibe with something.)

The name of the album is an anagram, kinda like the album itself. Original building blocks have been rearranged. Jukka sings: "Sitten kerran kun avaat radion, kuulet kumman tuttua, kaunista, jonka luulet oot kerran tuntenut, jonka luulit oot voinut unohtaa." ("And then, once, when you open the radio, you hear something oddly familiar, beautiful, that you think you've known once, that you thought you might have forgotten") Thanks to Jukka, Jukka's band and everyone who made the album!

February 18th, 2014

Karri 'Paleface' Miettinen