The word “experimental” is often chucked about casually nowadays-in many cases, anything that doesn’t follow a rigid verse-chorus-verse structure seems to qualify as such-but in the case of K I! it’s entirely appropriate they are true musical innovators. Built around catchy hooks and delicate melodies, the record ebbs, and flows, taking the listener on a cosmic journey. Stylistically, Kairon IRSE! have always been something of a fusion of space rock and shoegaze, however, Ruination heralds a quirkier, more prog rock-like era for the band. For a band who write music of such complexity and magnitude, it seems almost criminally unjust that they’ve not received more recognition in the time they’ve been active the quality of their work eclipses that of many of their better-known and lauded musical peers. Despite having written some damned impressive material over the past six years or so, however, in terms of support, this oddball Finnish four-piece have never amassed much more than a small cult following. Produced by Oranssi Pazuzu frontman Juho Vanhanen, Ruination is Kairon IRSE!’s third full-length LP. Ordinarily I would repudiate this as pretentious guff and refuse to play ball, but since I have no moral qualms about whoring out my grammatical practices in exchange for quality music, for the sake of a band as outrageously impressive as K I!, I’m willing to suppress my inner Grammar Nazi and get on board. And no, before you ask, I didn’t just sneeze and hit the punctuation keys by mistake that’s just how they like their name to be written. Finnish progsters Kairon IRSE! are a band who embrace this mentality emphatically. When a band comes along that laughs defiantly in the face of such convention-opting instead to carve out their own path-it’s only right they’re accorded the recognition they deserve. With the number of untapped creative avenues steadily decreasing with every new album release, many musicians merely end up putting their own spins on pre-established formulas.

A treasure-trove of glitching, elated sounds, that takes psychedelia into a new dimension, Polysomn brings to mind the melodic lightning of bands like Dungen, the chainsawing alternative guitar fuzz of My Bloody Valentine, the sparkle and dreamscape of Slowdive, and the technological envelope-pushing of Radiohead’s outsider works.True originality can be an elusive commodity to come by in the modern music environment. As the new decade unfolds, Kairon IRSE! prepare to pour down their multicoloured dreams thru your cerebral cortex on their highly anticipated new 3rd album,Polysomn. Following a European tour in 2017, Kairon IRSE! set sails for a performance at Roadburn Festival 2018, securing their name in the heart of the underground as rising stars of psychedelic post-rock. The Guardian found their music “as invigorating as a dip in a Finnish lake”, with “a sense of the visionary and sublime”, featuring Kairon IRSE! as New Band Of The Week. Prog Magazine referred to their “propulsive storm of psych rock hiss’n’fizz”, and Kairon IRSE!’s carefully crafted song structures came to the fore on Ruination, flexing a newly-forged pop sensibility for reshaping past influences into a futuristic tour de force of consciousness expansion.

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