Kirka - Igor

KIRKA

Igor / Alku kaiken kauniin

Scandia KS 810
1969
7"






Igor is a very raw uptempo funk song about a dog named Igor. Both songs are taken from a Jörn Donner movie 69, that was released the same year. In an interview Kirka tells that Jörn Donner was making a movie at that time and needed the music for it. So he rushed into the Scandia office and told that he needed a singer, a good one, and he knew Scandia had one. So Donner picked up Kirka to sing the soundtrack songs that were first released on a four track 45 ep and later on Kirka's self titled debut studio album. Kirka also tells that Donner already had in mind some songs made by Claes af Geijerstam that were already recorded in Sweden and he wanted Kirka to sing them in Finnish. On the other hand, Kirka's autobiography says that these songs were made for the movie 69 and later sung in English by Tommy Körberg for the international version of the movie. Anyway Igor is a great funk track that starts with a raw drum break and also features some exotic sounds made by a guitar with really loose strings that sound just like a sitar. There's two different versions of the Igor 45 with the other one (KS 811) having the song Pitkän tien pää (another Spinning wheel cover) on the flipside. KS 810 starts with an introduction of the song and the drum break fades in from the silence while KS 811 (and the album version) starts with the banging break without any fade in. B-side track Alku kaiken kauniin is a ballad from the movie. Both tracks appear also on the album Kirka (Scandia HSLP 114). Both the album and the 45s are quite hard to find.