1972 by Anla Courtis ja Lehtisalo

ANLA COURTIS JA LEHTISALO – 1972

A meeting of minds across continents, 1972 unites two underground visionaries: Anla Courtis, the Argentine experimentalist known for his boundary-pushing work with Reynols, and Jussi Lehtisalo, the Finnish avant-rock architect behind Circle, Pharaoh Overlord, and Ektro Records. Their collaboration unfolds as an abstract, free-flowing dialogue — an exercise in sonic alchemy where the hypnotic collides with the microtonal.

Born in Buenos Aires, Courtis has spent decades reshaping the language of experimental music. As a founding member of Reynols, he helped pioneer a surrealist, anti-structural approach to sound that blurred the lines between noise, conceptual art, and outsider music. Beyond Reynols, his solo work and collaborations with figures like Pauline Oliveros, Makoto Kawabata, Lasse Marhaug and David Grubbs — explore prepared guitar techniques, tape manipulation, and field recordings, creating dense sonic environments at the intersection of drone, improvisation, and South American folk traditions.

Lehtisalo, a restless force in Finland’s underground, has built an immense and ever-evolving discography. As the driving force behind Circle, he has navigated krautrock, metal, ambient, and progressive rock with a chameleonic, genre-defying spirit. His countless side projects Pharaoh Overlord, Rättö ja Lehtisalo, Ektroverde expand on these impulses, stretching from cosmic freeform electronics to heavy stoner riffage. Through Ektro Records, he has curated a singular catalog of obscure prog, kraut, experimental oddities, and cult underground gems.

1972 nods to an era when sound was an experiment — a space to explore rather than define. Yet this album is no mere exercise in nostalgia. Instead, Courtis and Lehtisalo reassemble fragments of past and future into something fluid, organic, and timeless. Their music moves beyond linear time, dissolving the boundaries between structure and chaos, improvisation and composition, the ancient and the unknown.

(Juho Toivonen)