Careful. Even though you might want to dry-hump the vinyl reissue of Pekka Airaksinen’s Buddhas of Golden Light, Pekka himself advises against it, as that sort of thing seriously risks damaging the record beyond the willingness of anyone to repair or replace (once you tell them the circumstance). Additionally, the album’s original self-release in 1984 fell more than a decade subsequent to the Finnish experimenter’s founding of The Sperm, so even though that particular free-jazz performance troupe welcomed all sorts of sexual debauchery, the 70s period of post-spermicide was arguably marked by a personal calming. Pekka released the solo, electronic, and occasionally noisy One Point Music in 1972, and then… silence.
And then… enlightenment! While so many others were using the Roland 808 to back a novel form of urban musical poetry, Pekka combined the drum machine with wayward saxophone and the Yamaha DX7 to create something that hip-hop lyricists would’ve dared each other to rhyme over (and who would then cry following their inevitable failure). A press release’s reference to Sun Ra makes sense, and supposedly Buddhas of Golden Light marked the beginning of a 999 Buddha musical tribute, whereby Pekka would make about one CD-R per Buddha. He’s up to over 100 now — surely a recipe for good karma.
Arc Light Editions is doing the honors for the vinyl/digital reissue, which, after several delays, is out TODAY.
Here are some one-minute samples:
Buddhas of Golden Light tracklisting:
01. Sukirti
02. Suvarnasatarasmibhasagarbha
03. Ratnasikhin
04. Kandrasuryapradipa
• Pekka Airaksinen: http://daka.fi/airaksinen
• Arc Light Editions: http://arclighteditions.bigcartel.com
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