Part experimental jazz, part progressive, part sultry but all Getsemane – the newest work of art they’ve created for Svart Records is entitled Viimaa. There is a darkness to the sound, like mushrooms and the mycelial network dark. It’s taking the Hobbits to Isengard black. It’s underground clubs in New York City and Frankfurt, the ones with the brick on the inside; smokey, dense, hot. 

There’s an element of jazz circa the nineteen sixties in Viimaa. The songs are grounded and earthy. Getsemane would be comfortable playing in Harlem, the one in New York City, back in the sixties and seventies. To wit, it sounds like the jazz albums my mum and gram used to play back in the day. 

Getsemane boats some top notch playing and musicianship. Jonne Savela is without a doubt one of the best bass players out there. He’s got soul and rhythm and the devil riding his coat tails. I’ve said often that the proof that god exists is the duo of Max Roach and Charlie Mingus. Jonne Savela and Markus Nokelainen are the modern equivalent. Getsemane take that classic jazz era of the sixties in Copenhagen and transforms it to something magical and wonderful in Finland in the current age. Thank the maker there are still musicians of this caliber that compose and play music like this. Gob smacking, it is. 

Viimaa vacillates between the mean gritty streets of New York and the swank hopping clubs of Copenhagen in a jazz wonderland of compositions. The album oozes with the sweat of pulsing bodies. Sami Koivisto adds some wonderful Led Zeppelin touches and rock and roll with his spot-on guitar playing and sax player Sami Sippola adds another layer of dare I say again… sultriness. A vast majority of the album is instrumental and from time-to-time Pekuri strides in and lays some verbiage on us cool hip cats. 

Viimaa is very much in da couch; it’s heady music you feel deep to your bones. You lose yourself and time by listening to the album but you do so with it on repeat. Viimaa is a visual cacophony of movement and rich browns, beiges, yellows, and oranges. Viimaa is grit and grime. Viimaa is the heartbeat of a generation. Viimaa is Shaft, Kojak, and Baretta. Getsemane’s Viimaa is all that is good about music and then some. 

Buy the album here:

https://www.svartrecords.com/en/product/get%C5%A1emane-viimaa-lp/10719

9 / 10

VICTORIA ANDERSON