Keijo

A Finnish free-folk singer and guitarist whose spare, ritual songs fit squarely in the Ikuisuus tradition.

Screenprinted coiling tape loop — abstract sleeve-art motif (late Ikuisuus CD-R era)

Keijo is a Finnish free-folk musician whose spare, incantatory songs — often built around voice and guitar — sit comfortably alongside the label’s more abstract drone work. Recording both alone and with a loose backing group, Keijo represents the song-based, folk end of the Ikuisuus roster.

His work circulated through the same hand-made CD-R and cassette network that defined the label, and through the distro that Ikuisuus ran alongside its own releases. Among his Ikuisuus-issued recordings is Neverending Blues, a set very much in the label’s hand-made idiom.

Song at the folk end

Keijo & The Free Players extend the solo work into loose group form, but the centre of gravity stays with the song — voice and guitar, unhurried, closer to ritual folk than to the drone of the label’s other artists. It is the most traditionally song-shaped music in the catalogue, and among its most direct.