Jatuli Observatory by Vongoiva

Featured on Late Junction BBC Radio 3

"the music also exudes a certain protection, like the comfort of having a shelter to protect you from the storm outside..." --- ambientblog.net

Rocks grind, winds howl, the ocean rages, and the viking violin plays on.

Taking inspiration from Finnish folk tales of giants, the audiovisual duo Vongoiva composed Jatuli Observatory as they sheltered from a winter storm for five days on Jurmo, a tiny sliver of an island in the Baltic Sea, home to just a dozen people.

Vongoiva is composer Heikki Lindgren and videographer Ville Westerlund, and together the pair have created a dark and mesmeric merging of sound and image.

Layering windy, violent and ominous oceanic field recordings with his use of the Jouhikko, the viking violin, Lindgren gifts us with a transformative journey over the seven compositions comprising Jatuli Observatory, by turns terrifying, wondrous and strange. Mysterious too are Westerlund's shadowy, aqueous and beguiling films, in which the fantastical and the everyday swirl, congeal and dissolve.

"Jatuli is an old Finnish word and means "giant". There are old rock formations all over Finland which are called giant´s gardens "jatulintarha" which gave inspiration to this album," Lindgren explains.

In the eye of a Jurmo storm Vongoiva has conjured a singular version of these mythic gardens from the elements: stone, wind, water.
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Each piece on Jatuli Observatory features both Lindgren's sound and a video by Westerlund. Visit each track for the link.

Vongoiva (Heikki Lindgren and Ville Westerlund) are based in Finland.
For more: https://www.nordicambient.com/

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