Although a trailblazer of Finnish jazz, whose ECM albums such as Nan Madol and Satu are classic entries in that country's pantheon, drummer Edward Vesala was also a serial collaborator who worked with German giants Peter Kowald and Peter Brötzmann as well as Nordic leading lights Jan Garbarek and Arild Andersen on the fine 1973 album Triptykon. In the same year he released his first solo set that now receives a welcome vinyl reissue, handsomely packaged with the original sleeve designed by the artist as well as in-depth sleeve notes by leading Helsinki journalist Harri Uusitorppa

This album is more than a curio. It is testament to Vesala's irrepressible maverick spirit as well as his musical imagination. Using an arsenal of both untuned and tuned percussion he creates a series of intriguing miniatures that are mostly a few minutes in duration (bar the lengthier ‘Hommage To Jan Garbarek’) and the result is excellent. Seamless movement from kit to sundry items enables Vesaala to launch slaloming, staggered journeys through time and space that cleverly play on deceleration-acceleration dynamics, and daring shifts of shape and colour that stem from a strict focus on the brightness of a rimshot, the darker thud of a tom-tom, or the shimmer of a vibraphone. Idiosyncratic music that captures the character of an artist who took to the risky vertigo of unaccompanied performance like a seasoned tightrope walker.