Not funk music but a demanding, innovative piece of chamber music and psychedelic avant-garde jazz, Think-Tank-Funk is an unusually daring album to appear in 1973 in Finland. Half-impossible to find on vinyl, the Svart reissue comes added with a fresh interview with Helasvuo.
Esa Helasvuo, known for his long musical career encompassing choral music, orchestral works, soundtracks and children's music, had years of composing experience under his belt already (he had, for example, written the Vesa-Matti Loiri number Brontosauruksen y- for Syksyn Savel competition) when he began working on his solo album Think-Thank-Funk, which came out in 1973.
Instead of presenting his album idea to Love Records where the brave fusion of avant-garde and jazz undoubtedly would have felt more at home, the 28-year old Helasvuo and his collaborator Hasse Walli marched to the office of Toivo Karki, the head of the rather schlager-oriented Finnlevy. Karki, the legendary figure in the Finnish popular music history, could see the music's revolutionary value just by reading the score and promised to publish it, even if he predicted the poorest sales in the company's history.
