Islaja

Discerning fans of underground music have followed the Fonal label’s bewitching brand of avant-folk since the late ’90s, when its records started appearing stateside with regularity. Other than Fonal’s lovely, artisanal-quality packaging, one of the imprint’s chief appeals is the way its artists have formed a distinctly regional sound: woodsy, shambolic and generally unhindered by song structure. Yet on her uncommonly affecting third album, Merja Kokkonen, who records under the name Islaja, bears little more resemblance to her labelmates than she does to any other musician.

What’s peculiar is that Kokkonen achieves her dislocating and deeply psychedelic sound by forming her songs more or less traditionally, as vocals backed with instrumentation. But what vocals! Kokkonen sings on Ulual YYY as if divinely inspired, except that her deities reside in some completely unknown place. Stark piano opens “Kutsukaa Sydäntä,” the album’s first piece, before a spray of picked guitar and various instruments enter in a tumbling nonarrangement. Even as the music seems to be in a state of gentle collapse, however, Kokkonen’s voice arcs improbably upward, as if obeying another dimension’s laws of physics. A similar tension emerges on “Pete P”: As a somber collection of guitar, percussion and electronics paints in charcoal tones, she swoops above and around the music with unearthly grace, tracing unpredictable melodies. This shape-shifting magic—its only parallel being the profoundly mysterious music of Houston’s Jandek—repeats throughout Ulual YYY.

Like the included Finnish lyrics, the album’s title is an enigma I’d prefer not to solve. — Mike Wolf