Shogun Kunitoki

Shogun Kunitoki's debut album, Tasankokaiku, released by Fonal in early 2006 came out of nowhere and established the previously unknown band as one of the most original instrumental groups to have emerged after the post rock boom. Tasankokaiku's psychedelic mix of minimalist form and maximalist sound that draws equally from the academic avant-garde and the left-field rock canon from the 60s to the present day has won the group a small but fervent fanbase.

The roots of Shogun Kunitoki go back to the late 1990s. After a few years of creating hypnotic, churning drones with Commodore 64 computers the group grew frustrated by the restrictions of the 8-bit universe and started experimenting with more expressive sound sources. Slowly, Shogun Kunitoki moved away from computer-based music, and was eventually reborn as a real band with live instrumentation and a new, organic sound.

With Tasankokaiku, Shogun Kunitoki cemented their newfound sound that was immediately recognized by reviewers and music fans as a compelling cocktail of accessibility and ambitious aspirations where edgy 8-bit bleeps and soft-focus psychedelia shake hands on seven kaleidoscopic trips. The record received favourable reviews from such established publications and websites as Wire Magazine, PopMatters, Stylus Magazine, Exclaim!, Dusted Magazine, and Pitchforkmedia, where it was even tagged as 'recommended'.

Shogun Kunitoki's concerts, accompanied by entrancing Super 8 -projections, have been rare occasions, especially outside their native Finland. So far only a handful of club and festival audiences in Sweden(Fylkingen), Estonia(HUH), Russia(IKRA), Belgium(Klarafestival, Etoiles Polaires) and the Netherlands (Bazaar Curieux) have had the chance to witness the group's double-organ attack. The music, however, has traveled wider, thanks to the endorsement of numerous music blogs and underground radio DJs in the US and Europe and as far as Australia and Japan. At New York's WNYU Tasankokaiku even hit the number one position on the weekly chart.

With their upcoming second album, out on Fonal Records in 2008, Shogun Kunitoki expand the boundaries of their self-created sonic universe with a wider array of sounds and rhythms. Where Tasankokaiku squeezed cosmic dust into fiery balls of molten lava with gravitational push and pull and followed the planets whirring through the void on looping trajectories, its yet untitled successor zooms in to explore the jagged shapes of exploding volcanoes, rolls with the moonlit waves through the cracks of sleeping, phosphorescent coral reefs and marches in step with the six-legged insect armies making their trails through the steaming jungle. Still, there is no mistaking the sound for any other band, because every atom of this newborn planet of sound has its origin in the seething psychedelic stew that flows under the surface and burns your feet if you let them stop moving.