Päiväkahvit by Sontag Shogun & Lau Nau – Stationary Travels

wpadminAugust 2, 2025

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American avant-garde trio Sontag Shogun and Finnish composer, producer, & musician Laura Naukkarinen, aka Lau Nau first came together in 2019 to record 12 hours of material that resulted in the 2022 release of their outstanding collaborative album Valo Siroutuu (“Light is Scattered”). Incorporating in-situ field recordings, impromptu outdoor songwriting, intimate chamber arrangements, and lyrics delivered both in Finnish and English, this was an utterly charming meditation on themes place, time, nature, home, play, and language. Naturally some material from those sessions was either never finished or missing from the final cut, but that situation is remedied in the most satisfying of ways with the release of Päiväkahvit in the summer of 2025.

In his essay “Hoarding Ideas & Mining Past Moments“, Sontag Shogun member Jesse Perlstein explains how he was moved to revisit the sessions with Laura and his bandmates, “resurrecting” them from what he called a dying laptop’s hard drive all the while asking himself “Why can’t this be special too?”

There were leftover songs, unfinished (un-Finn-ished?) material whose loss I couldn’t help but mourn, the constraints of the durational sides of vinyl. We talked about a re-release with bonus tracks or an EP — but I kept wondering: How much more beauty has been left buried? … What I found was potential: violin loops, breathy voice, blips of modular synthesis, the crackling of a sauna or pluck of an out-of-tune guitar, a chorus of blown bottles, and of course the sound of the land that held us.

Jesse Perlstein of Sontag Shogun

Spend a little time with the record and the true north orientation of Perlstein’s instincts become abundantly clear as does the justification for the beautiful release treatment it has been given by Beacon Sound and Studio Bernhardt. Just like the image of an evening coffee with friends that its title evokes, Päiväkahvit is a warmly inviting pastiche woven together from musical vignettes, new songs, and varied reworks along with field recordings that welcome the listener into an idyllic setting inhabited by unspoiled nature, laughing children, and cheerful friendship. Those who relished the charms of Valo Siroutuu will no doubt find this companion release to be the ideal reprise while anyone who has missed out on the project entirely up to this point now has double the pleasure of discovery to look forward to.

For those of you who don’t speak Finnish, “päiväkahvit” translates to “afternoon coffee,” which I find to be a frequent fixture in my now sleep-addled life. It’s also the perfect way to listen to music — inside, with a fresh cup, watching dust motes dance in the afternoon light, trying to exist outside of linear time.

Jesse Perlstein

Päiväkahvit is available now from Beacon Sound in a 140g Crystal Clear vinyl LP edition along with digital download and streaming options. The album was mastered by Jason Powers and features artwork and design by Studio Bernhardt. An added treat on the digital version of the album is a gorgeous 12-plus minute live version of the title track from Valo Siroutuu performed at the Aladdin Theater in May of 2022 when the artists took the stage together to open for a show with Julianna Barwick (video below).