Various Artists - 7A19 (2023)

This is so good - Pekka Airaksinen, Ramleh, Konstruktivists, Jimi Tenor and more appear on a brilliant, perplexing compilation of unreleased exclusive demos plucked by Piitu Lintunen, an early industrial fiend and key member of Finnish underground, for Sähkö

Under a title as cryptic as the music, ‘7A19’ hurls myriad artists related to the industrial/post-industrial canon into a riveting sort of compilation-cum-reminiscence. Harvested from the archive of Piitu Lintunen, who was in correspondence with Merzbow and Genesis P-Orridge during the formative early ‘80s - and who would later issue an overlooked ambient collaboration with Andrew McKenzie (The Hafler Trio) in 1993 - the set works to a polysemous definition of industrial musick spanning Richard Youngs-esque free-folk thru ether-dream curio by Konstruktivists, to obscure Dutch blatz and a number of Finnish obscurities ranging from contemporaneous Pekka Airaksinen to proper head-scratchers from the fringes of industrial history.

While the notion of “industrial music” may have calcified into more prosaic conceptions in recent years, back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s it was a sprawling network of disparate, experimental artists with common ties in tape mail networks and DIY zines. ‘7A19’ compiler Piitu Lintunen ran punk zine Pöly with his brother back then, and the material here all stems from that period of sharing underground demos. Noisy nuts will be in their element here with what sounds like Ramleh’s ode to the charred remains of Lee “Scratch” Perry’s studio in ‘Black Ark’, Neljän Seinän’s bilgy murk, and no doubt the atonal clang and holler of ‘Tasaday’ by the unheard of Il Rito, but we’re most attracted to the set’s sweeter stuff.

The communal jam of ‘Now It’s Time Now’ by French freak folk DDAA remarkably pre-echoes Richard Youngs later works, and we’re transfixed by Corum’s mesh of grubby rhythm with FM synths in the mythological ambience of ‘Hecate’s Swaying Garden’, and the smartly placed ‘Magick Garden Rebirthed’ by CLAIR, plus the Afrotronic bleeps of Jimi Tenor, and proto-Skweee electro sleaze by Sperm’s Pekka Airaksinen.

1.01 - DDAA - Now It's Time Now (3:23)
1.02 - Konstruktivists - Opening Singns (4:02)
1.03 - Ramleh - Black Ark (2:13)
1.04 - Neljän Seinän Jumalat, Neljän Seinän Jumalat - TV-orgasmi (4:43)
1.05 - Corum - Hecate's Swaying Garden (5:38)
1.06 - clair, Clair - Magick Garden Rebirthed (5:32)
1.07 - Jimi Tenor - Ainon kyynel (3:59)
1.08 - Tasaday - Il Rito (3:29)
1.09 - Odal - Flaming Piano (3:34)
1.10 - Pekka Airaksinen - Untitled (3:34)