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Haikara — Geafar
(EKTRO-006, 1973/2000, CD)

by Mike Grimes, Published 2001-03-01

Geafar Cover art

Geafar was the second album from Finnish band Haikara. Led primarily by guitar and sax, the music is in the quirky funk rock category. The tracks have a lot of variety. The album's opener, "Change," has a Chicago-style brass section with mega-fuzz bass and really funky groove, topped off with "power to the people" lyrics. Ahh, the good old 70s... "Kantaatti" on the other hand is a slow song that has mellow piano and flute with female wordless vocals. "Kun menet..." sounds like it could be on a Mr. Bungle album — quirky bass riff pop song with the oddest wah-wah guitar solo ever. The core instrumentation consists of drums, bass, guitar, keys, flute, and sax. At various points, the band is augmented with miscellaneous brass and string instruments. The highlight of the album is certainly the lengthy multi-section title track. It contains all the best elements of the group in one long song. Starting with a cool piano intro that is reprised in the middle of the song, the track moves through some very bizarre odd time signature parts with distorted guitar and sax parts galore. Slow, fast, loud, soft — this track has it all. There's even a french horn solo! This reissue from 1974 comes complete with all the tracks from the original album plus a few bonus tracks from later years. Unfortunately, the bonus tracks are from after the band apparently decided to go the short, straight-ahead, pop song route. They are mostly throwaways compared to the album's original five pieces. Though (Emerson and Jobson fans take note) I think there is Yamaha CS80 featured on one of the bonus tracks! The original Geafar tracks make this an album worth picking up.

Filed under: Reissues, Issue 21, 2000 releases, 1973 recordings

Related artist(s): Haikara

 

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