Horror Vacui is the debut solo offering from Finnish vocalist, composer, producer, and bandleader
Selma Savolainen. She is a member of the award-winning jazz-vocal group
Signe and the warped jazz-pop-indie band
Mikko Sarvanne Garden. Appearing on
Michael Janisch's
Whirlwind Recordings label, this set showcases ten original compositions that wed Finnish folk tenets, modern jazz, and indie pop.
Savolainen wrote and arranged eight of these tunes for her handpicked, all-star Finnish jazz sextet: clarinetist
Max Zenger, trumpeter
Tomi Nikku, pianist
Toomas Keski-Saentti, bassist
Eero Tikkanen, and drummer and
Okko Saastamoinen. In addition are two covers of jazz standards that have informed the singer's musical career:
Billy Strayhorn's A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing" and
Kurt Weill's and
Ogden Nash's "Speak Low."
Zenger shines on set-opener "Intense Ways to Recover." It begins like a vanguard chamber piece, with only the singer's dreamy alto and overdubbed clarinets. When the rhythm section enters,
Savolainen shifts into a syncopated delivery that exists somewhere between
Meredith Monk,
Blossom Dearie, and
Kate Bush. "So Loud" weds a low-register, left-hand piano progression to twinned, droning lines from the clarinetist and vocalist. By the end of the first verse, a rock rhythm momentarily asserts itself in the refrain as the trumpet and clarinet begin expanding the harmonic frame to introduce
Nikku's resonant solo. "Subjects I" finds
Savolainen vocalizing in wide-open terrain that simultaneously recalls
Julie Tippetts and
Lauren Newton, with scatted lines, dissonant swoops, and angular lyricism. The reading of
Strayhorn's tune is rendered as an indie pop song, with an unusual time signature and transposed keys and cadences.
Savolainen employs elliptical phrasing that actually recalls
Annette Peacock's, even as her economical articulation of the lyrics is reverential and resonant. "Haunted" is a jazz ballad that exists in the same musical stratosphere as
Michael Garrick and
Norma Winstone's groundbreaking 1970 album
The Heart Is a Lotus. The canny interplay between the singer and each of her instrumentalists is warm, immediate, and emotionally communicative. The reading of "Speak Low" retains its theatrical ground, while the band sways and swings around her disciplined articulation of the striking words. She reflects the tune's original presentation even as she stretches herself, while the band walks a tightrope between cabaret and modern jazz. "Days of Suffering" was co-composed with
Keski-Saentti and showcases
Savolainen's mature composition style. Her pop phrasing and harmonic blueprint meet syncopated, nearly angular post-bop with muted trumpets, contrapuntal interplay from clarinet and piano, and cascading drums that transforms the ballad into a dramatic, powerful processional. The closing track offers a gentler translation of the album title: It literally means "the horror of the void."
Savolainen,
Nikku, and
Keski-Santti turn that notion outward. They embrace each melodic idea and allow the band's members equal access to one another and the singer, who vulnerably hovers and floats through the lyric melody.
Horror Vacui is an assured, expertly rendered, forward-thinking collection by one of Finland's most visionary singers and composers and will hopefully expose her to a global jazz audience. ~ Thom Jurek
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