It was a calm evening on January 26, 2024, in Hyvinkää. After traveling on a train for a couple of hours to get there from Espoo, listening to ALTAMULLAN ROAD‘s music feels like a way of welcoming you from a journey. It is hard to write objectively about their music as it is so packed with emotions and relatable life stories. And, to be honest, there is nothing objectively wrong to write about; the performance was well-rehearsed, yet it was easy to pick out genuine emotion from everyone on stage, and the sound was well-balanced wherever I went while taking photos.
The way I would describe their music is that moment when you are in a small ship, just after the storm when the wind and the waves have calmed down, but you are still surrounded by dark, stormy clouds, and there are two strong beams of light from the lighthouse in the distance welcoming you home. You know the danger is over, and soon everything will be alright.
This manifests musically in the form of gentle, subdued instrumentation that is just enough to carry the words, with an occasional well-measured and tasteful guitar solo, and punctuated with essential percussions that are either done on the guitars or a single tom drum in some songs. The audience readily participated with clapping prompts throughout the show. The two beams of the lighthouse are the heartwarming and bright vocals of Johanna Kurkela and Johanna Iivanainen, melting together and supporting each other in beautiful harmonies.
My personal favorite ALTAMULLAN ROAD song is “Interstellar Friends,” which brings thoughts of all the dear friends I have scattered around the globe, from the Mediterranean, Ireland, Mauritius, USA, Baltics, whom I rarely see nowadays, spread out through temporal and spatial distance. But the moment we are reunited, we are right back where we left things off as if all that time and space were just a blink and a deep breath. I must also point out that the lighting was phenomenal, and the artist behind it managed to perfectly portray the feelings I just described.
After the first three songs, the band was kind enough to let me stay and enjoy the rest of the performance, split into two parts by a short intermission. Afterwards, they came back in different attire and performed several covers of popular Finnish and foreign songs. I still get shivers thinking about their rendition of Limahl‘s “Never Ending Story.” The audience was very quick to demand an encore, and the band happily obliged to stay with us for a couple more songs. After the concert, I was left with all these amazing photos and a sense of calm and warmth. I will be happy to include their songs on my playlists. Check our photo gallery here…
Photos by Vedran Brnjetic
