Luckily Finnforest wasn’t one of those Finnish progressive rock acts that only recorded one album and vanished. They became a household name for the Love Records label instead – and just one year after the release of their self-titled debut continued with Lähtö Matkalle. Pekka Tegelman has always been an enthusiastic reader and the album title was inspired by Toivo Pekkanen’s poem book by the same name. Tegelman read the book when he was a teenager and the title got stuck in his head. The lineup had expanded from the more stripped-down debut’s trio into a quintet. Jukka Rissanen wasn’t in the group anymore as he was studying in Hungary, but he was replaced by two members: Pertti Pokki and Jukka Linkola. One of the founding members, Jarmo Hiekkala, returned to the band to play the bass. Linkola lived in Helsinki at the time so he wasn’t a regular member of the group – more like a guest star. “Linkola was a great addition to the lineup and helped a lot in making of the album”, says Jussi Tegelman. The full lineup looked like this: Pekka Tegelman (electric guitars), Jussi Tegelman (drums, congas, timpani, synthesizer), Pertti Pokki (synthesizer), Jarmo Hiekkala (electric bass, fuzz bass), Jukka Linkola (electric piano, grand piano, synthesizer, organ) plus a Swedish string section conducted by the late (and one of the founding members of Love Records) Otto Donner. The Svart reissue of this Finnish prog rock classic comes with unseen photos and new liner notes by Arttu Seppänen.