Kaukolampi - Synestopia Variations 1-4 Kaukolampi

K-X-P / Optimo adjacent synthesised utopianism from Finland.

Kaukolampi's third solo album—Synestopia Variations 1-4 —was a long time coming. A piece of music first recorded in 2020, the year of pestilence, Timo Kaukolampi developed a five-year obsession with the track, frantically experimenting and seeking out more and more complex overdubs, with electronics, beats, and organic instruments. And yet, somehow the song never felt finished. Somehow it was impossible to stack each recorded track seamlessly on top of each other. Periods of intense work were followed by frustration, which was followed by Kaukolampi moving onto new ideas, before being inevitably drawn back to the world of Synestopia.


The breakthrough came when Kaukolampi had a realisation that while it may not have been possible to finish the music vertically, but instead it would make sense for the tracks to be split up, to follow each other horizontally, rather than vertically. This was the epiphany needed to finish the album.

So what of the music? On the main version of Synestopia you can hear a brilliant acapella part sung by Ringa Manner, the vocalist of Haunted Plasma, a band formed from members of K-X-P, Oranssi Pazuzu and Circle. Electronic beats are complemented by Finland's own Jaki Liebezeit enthusiast Anssi Nykänen, a combo that creates kosmische disco with echoes of Manuel Göttching and Jan Hammer. Other tracks on the record include instrumentation like clarinet by Helmi Malmgren and eternal feedback by Tuomas Toivonen’s rare Moog E1 guitar.

Title “Synestopia” is a wordplay of Timo Vaittinen (the designer of the stark, monochrome artwork), who fused the words "synesthesia" and "utopia".

Remember to think horizontally, not just vertically.