Nukkuu (Finnish for Sleeps) is the long awaited sophomore album by celebrated
Finnish femme folk fave Lau Nau. Nukkuu is psychedelic, abstract & emotionally
captivating. Nukkuu is an album of changes.
In the years since her debut album Kuutarha, Laura became a mother, moved to
the Finnish countryside and took valuable time to carve out a space for her
enchanted art in the new found tranquility of her remote surroundings.
Conceived in tight attics & vacant dens on off hours when her young son Nuutti
was fast asleep, this is an intimately crafted 9 song collection that unfolds like
dreamlike musical ribbons for the senses and delivers the listener to a place of
unhurried contentedness.
NUKKUU (LOCUST111 / in Finland FONAL ) WILL BE IN STORES MAY 13, 2008
Lau Nau is free spirited Finnish artist Laura Naukkarinen. Since the release of her celebrated debut full
length Kuutarha on Chicago’s Locust Music in 2005, Lau Nau has enjoyed considerable recognition for
her intimate & playful blend of ethnic tinged folk songs with curious & intuitive sounds conjured from familiar
and exotic sound sources.
Kuutarha made many year end best of lists and achieved recognition as an
“important record” (Dusted), a “tremendously powerful statement” (Brainwashed) that “begs to become
many a listener’s point of fixation, source of meditation and object of adoration" (lost at sea). In their 8.0
review, Pitchfork praised lau nau’s unique combination of edginess and warmth on Kuutarha: “(Lau Nau)
manages to take a million-and-one risks while keeping things subtle, understated, aesthetically intriguing
and emotionally resonant". Stop Smiling magazine praised the album for its ”natural beauty, isolation and
mystery” and the Chicago Reader called the album “diverse and exotic, with a dying-campfire vibe” echoing
a generally held sentiment among critics and fans alike that with Kuutarha, Lau Nau had tapped into
something uniquely foreign yet emotionally rich, vital and rewarding.
In May 2008, Lau Nau’s long awaited follow up, Nukkuu, sees release on Locust. A part of a continuum of
sorts, Nukkuu, travels the outer pathways of sound similar to those heard on Kuutarha yet Nukkuu is
unavoidably enriched by Lau Nau’s own life changes in the years between the two records. Naukkarinen
became a mother and moved her family to Finland’s remote countryside and with new distance and new
devotion in life, her musical world underwent its own subtle shifts. The beauty, mystery and daring of her debut are traits that run through the main veins of Nukkuu but there is an almost unavoidable sense of
contentedness amidst the tide of musical abstraction that brings the listener one step closer to her interior
sound world. The release of Nukkuu will be supported by extensive performing in Europe in the Spring
and Summer 2008 and a North American tour this Fall.
As a live performer, Lau Nau has enjoyed opportunities to perform in a wide array of venues from small
informal spots like Massachusetts’s Montague Bookmill & Westers Gallery on Kemiö Island, Finland to
larger spaces like Stockholm’s Kulturhuset, New York’s Anthology Film Archives, the Contemporary
Art Centers in Glasgow, Brussels & Castelló and the Avanto festival in Helsinki. In recent years, her
rare and special live shows have earned her a special place among a legion of fans. This was further
cemented when a Lau Nau performance during her 2005 North American tour was counted among The
Wire magazine’s “60 Concerts that shook the world” in its February, 2007 issue.
Naukkarinen has been an active presence in the Finnish underground for the last decade playing in
groups like Kiila, Hertta Lussu Ässä, Päivänsäde, Avarus and the Anaksimandros, organizing concerts,
publishing a magazine and running a handful of small labels starting with POK and , more recently,
the Peippo label.
Her musical activities spread far beyond her recorded work and permeate almost every aspect of her private
and public life from her participation in multimedia events to her workshops teaching music to young
children throughout Europe.
Over the past five years, Lau Nau has participated in several spontaneously improvised live film scores to
classic avant-garde films including Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera, Christensen’s Haxan and
Dreyer’s La Passion de Joan d’Arc for the Turku Film Archive, Anthology Film Archives (New York) and
Bio Rex (Helsinki) and Tromso Stumfilmdager (Norway). In 2007, the score for Haxan (composed by Matti Bye) was
used as the accompanying soundtrack to the Swedish Film Institute’s DVD release of this legendary film.
Her music was used in a prestigious Magnum Photo essay "No Whisper, No Sigh" alongside fellow
Finnish musicians Islaja, Kuupuu and avant-garde legend John Cage in 2006. In 2008/2009, her music
will appear as the backdrop to an exhibition by Japanese photographer Moriyama Daido.
Lau Nau lives with her partner, Antti Tolvi, and their young son Nuutti in the remote countryside on
Kemiö island.
The Wire, Feb 07: 60 concerts (of all time) that shook the world: "The best set came from Lau Nau, the trio led by Laura Naukkarinen.
Visibly pregnant, Naukkarinen gently strummed and bowed her stringed tools with soft precision, like a snake shedding its skin. Her spiralling songs
were the most enchanting parts of an evening full of indoor campfires. Together, she and her Finnish comrades flipped the concept of the house show
on its head, making a cosy indoor nook feel like the great outdoors." (-Marc Masters about the show in Philadelphia, 2005)
Read and see more at:
www.haamu.com/launau
www.locustmusic.com
www.fonal.com
Watch Lau Nau perform "Painovoimaa, valoa" from her upcoming album at the Wire's 25th birthday festival in London:
http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/306/
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