Optimo | Akateeminen Kirjakauppa

Timo Kaukolampi, frontman for Finnish electronic rock group K-X-P and tireless sonic wanderer, is releasing his second solo album on Optimo Music. Exquisitely rendered, shadowy, curiously claustrophobic and even occasionally paranoid, Inside The Sphere is an album wholly deserving of its name.

A sense of paranoia is one of the threads through this glittering, winking electronic maze. Partly influenced by his brush with a serial conman, Kaukolampi says “I came up with this metaphysical concept of the “sphere”. When you are manipulated you are ‘Inside The Sphere’. It’s like this dome of ‘undue influence’ that you don't know exists around you. It's a bit like the inside of a cult.” Here, heady, swirling soundscapes threaten to engulf you, threaten to unduly influence you. ‘Chrystal Desert’ builds to a slow-motion climax, queasy vocal processing on ‘Ee-Nni-Aa-Ssa’ becomes almost chant-like, and the sparse polyrhythms, in Kaukolampi’s words, create an “eternal… hypnotic groove”.