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Kimmo Pohjonen Press Quotes KTU - Quiver, Prog magazine review, March 2010 Kimmo Pohjonen / Samuli Kosminen at Carnegie Hall / Zankel Hall, NYC, March 2010:
Sydney Festival 2008: “Pulverising avalanche of dark, primeval, sonic theatre” (Sydney Morning Herald) “..truly an innovator on his instrument and in his conception of improvised music. Layering chords upon chords and building to crescendos of melodic and harmonic extravagance by means of a seamless production of gradually mounting orchestral body from his instrument, pedaled special-effects such as loops, sampling, and playback, and guttural vocalizations, moans, and insect-like buzzes via a tiny mic resting upon his left cheek, Pohjonen rocked back and forth demonically on his stool, his face often contorted in emotional pain. So distraught did he appear in his final ten minutes or so onstage, as he hurled himself forward onto his feet into a crouch several times, pumping the accordion and manipulating its keys and buttons as though possessed by a spirit (as well he may have been -- the program parenthetically included as among his musical styles "shamanistic trance"), I thought that he would wrest the accordion from his shoulders by its straps and smash it on the stage….. …….Kimmo Pohjonen's performance proved to be a riveting musical and surreal theatrical experience, a multi-dimensional display of totally original, astonishingly eccentric, and unabashedly uncompromising artistic genius. I can't think of any performance of recent years that has so moved me.” (www.jazzhouse.org)
Pohjonen / Kosminen & Kronos Quartet UNIKO review, New York Times
..."Kimmo Pohjonen's performance proved to be a riveting musical and surreal theatrical experience, a multi-dimensional display of totally original, astonishingly eccentric, and unabashedly uncompromising artistic genius. I can't think of any performance of recent years that has so moved me...." (www.jazzhouse.org) "Finland's answer to Bjork... Pohjonen is
nothing less than jaw dropping. Utterly brilliant." (New Internationalist) "In the hands of Finland's Kimmo Pohjonen,
the accordion abandons its folk roots to become a gutbusting furnace of
shamanic sound, animated by primal energies and orchestral dynamics...a
performer whose blend of virtuosity and resolute experimentation is routinely
likened to that of Jimi Hendrix and Laurie Anderson."(Wire) "The dude on stage is twitching, eyes clenched
shut. His head's full of bugs, full of tumbling ideas, full of God
knows what. In his hands an accordion writhes and shudders. He lunges
into it and shark-like, it snaps back at him as spotlights skitter and
flash. He stumbles forward and trips off his pedestal, a drunk electrocuted
in a hailstorm of noise. Eardrums are bombarded as one man, his squeezebox,
his percussionist and a few pads 'n' pedals become a torrent of mantric
sonic wizardry, at once avant-garde, ancient and electro-punk." (Musik
magazine, England, July 2002) About Kimmo Pohjonen Kluster: "The accordion, panned and swirled through effects, goads a series of Eastern European rhythms into a seething Transylvanian fantasy... voices evoke souls in torment; and Kosminen's rhythmic samples conjure up infernal frying and boiling, or maybe a cavefull of snoozing monsters... The accordion devours the world..." (Wire) "Finland may be a land without Elvis…but it is a land with Kimmo Pohjonen." "….Pohjonen taps the accordion's buttons producing a cavern of icicles and indulges in an extended passage of glossolalia which avoids Bobby McFerrin territory by sounding like a group of monks Gregorian chanting, smacking their lips and undergoing EST treatment." (Wire) "…he'll be screaming absurdities into his mike, beating himself around the head and exor/exercising the banshees that live within the 65 kg instrument responsible for sounds no human could have hoped to hear while alive." (Mojo) "Kimmo Pohjonen extends the range of the accordion beyond anything I've previously heard. He pushes and pulls,...heaving from it sounds that defy any expectation of what it can achieve....a musician of immense talent, invention and wit...". (Songlines) "Listening to Kimmo Pohjonen play, you can feel your brain being rewired. All the preconceived notions about what an accordion should sound like and what kind of music it should play are dismantled and cleared away. Watching him perform is an even more shattering experience, like a month at an accordion reeducation camp." (Snowbound) "I missed Kimmo's show at WOMEX 99 but I sure saw the aftermath. I saw people from north, south, east and west staggering out of the hall, wide-eyed and gobsmacked. I saw them laughing and I saw some wiping away tears. Throughout the rest of the evening I kept hearing the same thing..'did you see that Finnish techno accordion terrorist..wow' " (Audience) "...a stirring show. Pohjonen jerking about like a tortured marionette receiving electric shocks from the bellows." "…one of the world's most idiosyncratic musicians, a lunatic fringe comibination of Yngwe Malmsteen, Phil Minton, Brian Eno, Astor Piazzolla and The Happy Wanderers." (Wire) "..a boundlessly ambitious improvisor - the kind of freewheeling performer who could easily have slotted alongside John Zorn and Han Bennink…" (The Guardian) "Pohjonen wrestles with the accordion as if it were an alligator, generating waves of rolling, swelling, wheezing, clattering live-sampled sound, building to a churning climax in which the music becomes almost detached from the man and his instrument." - (Folk Roots) "Calling Kimmo Pohjonen an accordionist is a bit like describing the Encyclopdia Brittanica as a book." (The Herald, Scotland) "An accordion that goes to the unlimited areas
of imagination. The result is outstanding. A phenomenon." (Ma`ariv,
Tel Aviv)
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