ONSÉGEN ENSEMBLE
This psych/prog collective come from a remote city in Finland, and have their eyes on the festival scene.
An isolated city on the northern west coast of Finland, Oulu has long been home to a slew of weird sounding bands, and Onségen Ensemble are joining the club.
“Progressive rock in Oulu has kind of this psychedelic thing going on,” says their bassist Esa Juujärvi. “There’s not so many people living here, so there’s not many prog bands either. But if you take into account that there are only 150,000 people, we do have a lot of bands [in general].”
Their newest album, Realms, was produced by ex-Messenger member, and master of the ‘vintage/modern’ sound, Jaime Gomez Arellano. The group use a gargantuan, nine-piece line-up to make the most maximalist of psychedelic rock. On the tune Naked Sky an army of vocalists sings atop of flutes, Ennio Morricone-esque strings and twinkling guitar arpeggios, for 10 minutes.
It’s a long away from how they sounded when they started, in the early 2000s, when they were more like Primal Scream, or Massive Attack. “We had a kind of electronic thing going on back then,”
Juujärvi recalls. “Because there were line-up changes, everyone had something new to bring to the band. I’m not sure we even have a straightforward vision for the long term. All that matters is the songs we’re making now.”
Lyrically, Realms is about different states of consciousness. The first half of the album is about death – as in transitioning from one realm to the next – and was inspired by the death of Juujärvi’s father. Meanwhile, the second half deals with madness and mental health struggles. “We are artists,” he explains, “and I know all kinds of artists and musicians with mental issues.”
Although Juujärvi admits Onségen Ensemble isn’t a full-time hustle (he’s a graphic designer by trade) the band do have goals. Mainly, he wants to make it to lauded experimental music festival Roadburn. “We aren’t going to become famous,” he says, “but I’d like to get invitations from bigger festivals to play live. We want to get just big enough to play some really good gigs.”
“We want to get just big enough to play some really good gigs.”