Dustedmagazine.com

Marshall McLuhan was right: the nervous system of our world has expanded exponentially. All of us are connected in a chain of thought and emotion, whether we want to be or not. Es’s third album manifests this global nervous system with a bright palette of subtle aural detail, haunting melodies and tangible texture. Hailing from Ulvila, Finland, Es is Sami Sänpäkkilä, a sound engineer, member of the experimental folk ensemble Kiila, day-to-day manager of Fonal Records and sometime collaborator with Kemialliset Ystävät. On Kaikkeuden kauneus ja käsittämättömyys (The Beauty and Inconceivability of Everythingness) Sänpäkkilä has cobbled together a warm mélange of glitch, musique concrete, drones, pulsars, lo-fi samples, vocals and live instrumentation that burns with the intimate glow of a bedside lap at 2 a.m.
His world does not so much come to us as it invites us to his bedroom. The gatefold package features drawings and oil paintings by close friends, the faces ghostly and distant, echoing the album's spectral voices and haunting melodies. Sänpäkkilä touches up his songs with the sounds of domesticity, like a hammer in a neighboring apartment or scissors cutting hair. Sänpäkkilä elevates theses sounds from their mundane existence by weaving them into the music's melancholy fabric. The hammer blows first reverberate like distant rumblings of thunder on “Hamuavia,” then become a dramatic loop on “Pehmeä Iho."