Liima - ii

Liima, 4AD’s newest signing, is the first new music to emerge from the ashes of Denmark’s Efterklang. The project, featuring three members of the band alongside Tatu Rönkkö, a Finnish percussionist, created their debut album ‘ii’ in an exceedingly inventive way, one which makes the album a strikingly polarising listen.

The band held four four-week residencies in Finland, Berlin, Istanbul and Madeira, before recording the results in three days, live, with no overdubs. Rönkkö’s beats sit at lockerheads with the band’s vocals and instrumentation for the album’s duration, constantly grappling each other for control. Metallic, industrial percussion shines when colliding with a pop-minded, easy-on-the-ears synth line on ‘Amerika’. Conveniently translated from Finnish as ‘glue’, Liima manage to work these opposing components together into an immovable force that twists and turns its way through ‘ii’ with all the youthful abandon and self-confidence in the world.

‘Roger Waters’ starts almost PC Music, with an indie pop song then slapped on top of it, which, somehow, works. ‘Woods’ and ‘513’ are the tracks that most feel like they were recorded with as little blueprint as is true, but still serve as a striking pair. It takes until the crescendo that closes ‘Change of Time’, and the album, for the mix-and-match elements that bring together Liima to fully gel and take flight. Everything up until then is a storm of new ideas that do hit and miss, sure, but could never be considered boring.