"LET'S NOT FORGET ABOUT HAVING FUN"

With their ninth studio album In Murmuration, Finnish rockers Von Hertzen Brothers have replaced their erstwhile prog epics for a more honest approach to songwriting reflecting their personal lives.

- Polly Glass

For parts of the year, Mikko Von Hertzen lives on the top floor of a 16-storey ashram in Kollam, on India's tropical Malabar coast. The view is full of the colours and noises that have informed his band's music-widescreen, enigmatic matter with rock vigour and a pop heart. Birds and butterflies swoop across the sky. Horns honk from the streets. Down by the sea, fishermen play cards under palm trees. Songs, chants and chatter drift up from various devotees and monastic disciples, all of them here for the spiritual wisdom of Mata Amritanandamayi Devic (or 'Mother Amma' as she's often known).

It was this apartment that Mikko moved into for seven years, back in the late 90s, following some hedonistic years in different touring bands. And it was here, in 2000, where he and his brothers Kie and Jonne (both of them visiting from Finland) decided to join forces as The Von Hertzen Brothers - looking out at the Arabian Sea, worlds away from the icy forests of their motherland. "I look out from my window that is facing the sea, the next thing there on the horizon is the Horn of Africa," Mikko, now 52, tells us.

"If you think of the soundscape, the ocean is moving all the time, there's a lot of birds screeching; every sunset they come back, they live here close by. But then here I'm so high up, and people are playing music in different locations around this building, so I get this kind of polyphonic soundscape." It's this height and openness that you'll hear on the Von Hertzens' new album, In Murmuration. On the back of two denser LPs, in a way it's something of a palate cleanser. 2017's moody, forward-kicking War Is Over drew on the refugee crisis across Europe. In 2022, their prog masterpiece Red Alert In The Blue Forest mixed the introspection of lockdown with impassioned environmentalism, the latter leading to the creation of a conservation area in Loppi, Southern Finland.