Florian Wahl’s Rahutuvi blurs the line between music and theatre

Florian Wahl’s new album Rahutuvi leans so heavily on sketches and humour that it often sounds more like an audio play than a collection of songs, ERR reviewer Neit-Eerik Nestor writes. The album, released by Kurvad Uudised Records, received a score of 6 out of 10.

Wahl has previously pushed musical conventions towards the absurd. On Rahutuvi, he strips musical standardisation back almost to a minimum, raising the question of whether the work is still a music album. Nestor says the humour and sketch-like scenes overshadow the music for the first time in Wahl’s work.

The reviewer also says Rahutuvi helped him understand comparisons between Wahl and Onu Bella, whom he regarded primarily as a humourist. He stresses that Wahl’s humour has generally been more nuanced and layered, sometimes even sad, and that the comparison can be unfair to Wahl’s musical ideas.

While earlier projects such as Intellikõnts and Katarsis garanteeritud also had elements of an audio play, Nestor says their theatrical qualities were more seamlessly integrated with the music. Rahutuvi could be a soundtrack for a musical, he suggests, and its theatrical character could lend itself to a stage spectacle.

Nestor adds that the album has fewer tracks that stand on their own outside the full journey through Wahl’s ideas. He also notes that Wahl’s recordings are only part of his work, with live performances having grown in scale in recent years.