Some notes on Goodness
Sir Erkki Hyva (sometimes also known as Mr. Good) is a one man army from Tartu, Estonia. He´s a home-recording artist and street musician and has occasionally performed with some bands. Starting to create music at the end of the 80s, Hyva has developed freaky sound of his own with references towards pathetic rock, campy schmaltz, tradition of troubadours, futuristic synthadelica, skiffle and concrete music. He does all by himself - sings, plays guitar, double bass, violin, old soviet synth Junost 21, and various percussive instruments. He had hours of unreleased material in his home, so we just picked out a tiny fraction of his life to give You some idea of it. The sound quality of these recordings (made mostly in 90s) is classic homey lo-fi, which we think sounds good in far-too-digitalized soundsphere of our time. Well…yup, D-I-Y still bites back, although Hyva considers his stuff to be purely pop, huh huh. But real twist of these songs comes out in overflowing soulfulness they are performed with. This adds a strong psyhedelelic overtone to these simple-minded melodies. Tempo and emotions just keep "swinging away"…and are definitely good for all you hardcore sentimentalists. Naivism rocks, lyrics are often "larger-than-life" outbursts of true love. The man himself is as kind and expressive as his songs. And music is only one part of Erkki´s creative universe - he is the inventor of harmonic system of Quint Square instead of Quint Circle and has many explanations and schemes concerning this discovery. He has done action painting and writing, participated in avant garde as well as in porn films and his life can be considered a one continuous act of performance. For example once he worked as a surgeon assistant in a hospital, but was kicked out after saying "Let me do it today. I´ve just had the flash of inspiration" before one operation. And he has a lot of these flashes, and travels in many levels of the conciousness. As You may deduce, he is also a great talker whose tricky sentences may blow your mind. Õunaviks´s (the name of our label means Apple Polish) crew added some "field recordings" to this cdr to give You some idea what lies behind the curtains. If You don´t know Estonian yet, You ought to learn just for the sake of getting close to Hyva´s messages. That may change Your life. But even simple listening without understanding a word may heal You. This tone… Ok, here´s a free translation of one example: One day Hyva had hangover from last night´s heavy drinking. He went for a jogging to sober up. As he run over soviet navy airport he saw the U.F.O., which was made of some kind of white plasma and moved speedily from one point to another, changing shape. U.F.O. emitted some kind of telephatic message to his mind, calling him along. Hyva answered: Sorry extraterrestrials, I have to go to the ball tonight so I can´t come along. Yeah, definitely good reason for staying for another lifetime. And let us be happy that this honest visionary is still on this Earth and listen…
Lauri Sommer (Kago)
labelmate