Shogun Kunitoki is a quartet from Helsinki with a love of vintage synths and keyboards, oscillators and ring modulators. They have produced two albums of driving and insistent instrumental psychedelic rock that have excited adventurous music fans across the globe with their deft mix of lysergic revivalism and post-rock innovation.



Debut album Tasankokaiku (2006) 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. Rave reviews gushed forth in The Wire magazine, PopMatters, Stylus Magazine, Exclaim!, Dusted Magazine, and Pitchforkmedia, where it was even tagged as 'recommended'. It was also top of the weekly chart on New York’s WNYU radio station.



Their second album, Vinonaamakasio (2009) saw Shogun Kunitoki claim full mastery of their somehow nostalgic yet futuristic and unique sound, with a fuller and fatter feel in both performance and production – the sound of a band in full possession of their powers. “There are splinters of Stereolab, bubbles of Broadcast, squeaks straight out of BBC Radiophonic experiments, the heart and soul of The Silver Apples...



The end result, while oddly familiar, is almost impossibly irresistible. Shogun Kunitoki’s use of crusty analogue instrumentation and that band dynamic injects the project with the human element lacking from so much electronic music. You can hear the band busy at work, shakers rattling, keys being pressed, drums being hit – and it’s all the better for it. I was beginning to think music of this calibre had died out completely. Highly recommended.” Boomkat.com



Despite the impact of their records, Shogun Kunitoki’s live appearances barely reach double figures, but their music 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. Both band and fervent audience concur that now is very much the time for the Shogun Kunitoki live experience to explode across the UK.



LINKS

www.shogunkunitoki.com

www.myspace/shogunkunitoki