📸 Jari Flinck (portraits) and Vilma Timonen (landscape), graphic designing Matti Sampela, costume Emmi Vainio

The Hanged Maid is a manifesto, an insurrection and an exaltation to acoustic percussion instruments!

This album is my exploration into the world of ancient spells and incantations that have so completely enchanted me. As a percussionist and a psychiatrist (Px3Kauppila), endlessly curious about life, such incantations have revealed to me a bright bridge connecting the world of modern medicine with the ancient past. Finnish incantation verse has cured disease and madness, expelled witches and other malevolents, and has been used in negotiating with the gods as recently as 100 years ago! The use of a broad variety of acoustic percussion instruments and the way they have been positioned socially in the auditory landscape represent to me the diversity in our world, and they also ring their commentary on the loss of biodiversity and on the reactionary developments in today’s public attitudes.

The Hanged Maid highlights the endemic inequality in our society, and presents perspectives on individual autonomy. The album discusses our very human need to find solutions and to nurture. I wish to extend a warm welcome for you to explore how the album has come to be, and to learn about the stories behind the songs. 

The album was released 17.5.2024 by EKZ Records

Original Finnish text by Pauliina Kauppila translated  into English by Piiastiina Tikka & Janne-Pekka Manninen

"The Hanged Maid overlaps folk music, talde tunes and experimental movement in a seductively open-minded way. The rhythms get to the essential part, which shapes the album into a pulsating masterpiece. The union of acoustic percussion and vocal harmonies glows with sumptuous diversity. The album's main work is the more than ten-minute title trilogy, which emanates an ancient fatalism. Pauliina Kauppila's sensual dive into the depths of the human mind oozes mysticism."

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

-Juha Seitz/ Ilkka-Pohjalainen 15.7.2024