“Sateenvarjo” – which means ‘umbrella’ in Finnish – is a dizzying, disorienting affair. Equally mind-bending is the video – which can be found on YouTube – that accompanies the release. Imagine a cross between Tomutonttu and a straightforward folk guitar record and you’re pretty close to visualizing the racket created by the Ester Poland duo on this CD-R. The single, sub-forty-minute track blends aimless guitar strum, synth whale song, bizarre samples and a variety of other miscellaneous sounds into a mile-high dust devil hurtling across a deserted salt pan. There is barely room to breathe as the cacophony continues to grow until the final few minutes, at which point the various sonic elements fall away gradually. Taking a cue from another tribe of Finnish weirdos, the pseudo-legendary Avarus, Ester Poland have spoofed a folk record and have let us all in on the joke. Released in a hyper-limited quantity of 50 copies on the Luovaja imprint, “Sateenvarjo” is another chapter in the cryptic tale that is modern Finnish psychedelia. 7/10 --
Bryon Hayes (1 April, 2009)