Job, by Job

Job

by Job

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
LIMITED EDITION CD IN ECOPACK CASING. COMES WITH LYRICS.

Includes unlimited streaming of Job via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

€10 EUR or more

	1.	Jobless 02:13
	2.	2oo High 03:45
	3.	“The Soul Of Man Under Socialism” 03:21
	4.	Grace 'n' Gravity 03:44
	5.	Still Content 03:30
	6.	Pure Spectacle 03:33
	7.	Universal Basic Outcome 04:15
	8.	Athens, Berlin 03:31
	9.	Harmoney Eventually 03:25

about

Deep listening to the welfare state with Sami Suova

Music reaches us anywhere if its creator has managed to tap into something specific. The magic behind music: figure out how to capture a singular experience and convert it into audio.

So how does it sound when you've chased your dreams only to see the infinite dread behind the curtain, and formed a family instead of a start-up? And what happens to your music if you’re eerily aware of the competitive hellscape known as ‘leading contemporary culture’ still informing your aesthetics?

Sami Suova knows. His duo Shine 2009 got Paula Abdul to feature on a track; then they signed a deal with Modular Recordings and toured with Cut Copy, and the works. Suova then went to Berlin to make it, moved back to Helsinki, didn't put out anything for years, and has now resurfaced with 9 new songs. Talk about in between jobs.

The acoustic ecologist R. Murray Schafer coined the term soundmark to describe a sound unique to a given place. If growing up avoiding becoming embittered because you missed the rock star bus can constitute a space, its soundmark must be Suova's dreamy voice. It goes up and down in pitch when it passes your ears, like the doppler effect of a car driving past a high street quieted by austerity politics.

Having produced the album by himself, Suova pairs his husky vocals with songs that never light up in flames, preferring a sustained warmth instead. Combining a sterile, 90's-sexy dryness with MIDI programming that communicates Lutheran modesty, Job is Steely Dan for the precariat.

Because work is everything for the creative class, being without a job is not unlike having one, if you exclude the economic hardship. For a native in a Nordic country, à la Suova, the latter isn’t necessarily that hard, thanks to a still-somewhat-robust welfare state.

Since socialist democracy has been fighting for its existence for as long as Suova’s been alive, his music often sounds like a farewell to a nation-state that used to look after its citizens so they could compose ambiguous love songs.

Who are these songs for? Even when he is singing about a loved one, it's hard to say if Suova is addressing a person, his work, the society, a higher power, or anyone willing to listen. If music is the message, then the message in this case is atmospheric: felt rather than deciphered.

“But I can always go deeper”, Suova croons on ‘Universal Basic Outcome’, fantasizing about the things one could do if securing your income was less of an issue. It's a track that's made for playlists titled ‘Flight 2 Helsinki’ that aim to soothe the travel ache of well-to-do Northern Americans who voted for Bernie Sanders.

As far-fetched as the analogy might seem, Suova’s music does evoke euro-dreams. The constrained yet entertaining nature of Job gives you a sense of what the European Union could have been, had its masterminds chosen socialism instead of neoliberalism. Creative destruction is cool but have you ever mainlined job security?

credits

released April 30, 2021

Written, performed, produced and mixed by Sami Suova
Mastered by Dave Cooley at Elysian Masters
Cover design by Tsto
Cover illustration by Minni Havas
Liner notes by Kaino Wennerstrand

CD edition released October 7, 2022

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Job Helsinki, Finland

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