When a band starts talking about everything from architecture to the films of Aki Kaurismaki, French Impressionism to modern classical composers such as Arvo Part you can pretty much guarantee they’re not going to be shaking their arse and vomiting out the door of the stretch limo very often. But that’s no bad thing. Sometimes you want something a little more cerebral and a little more challenging. No, I’m not talking about Deal Or No Deal, I’m talking about another game of chance completely, the chances taken in the studio by googly, downtempo Marko Nyberg/Reeta-Leena Korhola-led coalition of mad muso boffins more commonly known as Husky Rescue. And when I say coalition, I mean coalition. Debut album Country Falls was recorded with the help of twenty musicians with each track (described by Nyberg at least) ‘to be a warm breeze to counter the chill of daily life’ in the cold climes of a sunless winter. And if you had no idea Helsinki could be like that, you do now.
Picked up by Catskills Records in 2003 Husky Rescue pretty much live up to every expectation you could possibly have of the name. They’re breezy, they’re chill, they’re soft, they’re fluffy and should you ever be lost in a whiteout in the Grampians, then there’s worse Scandinavian, laptop balancing wolverines you could bump into.
Based around the purring, silky vocals of ice-breaker and bombshell, Reeta-Leena Korhola and a conflation of spatial, glacial noises and trippy, orchestral beats, Ghost Is Not Real is a more clipped, disruptive and gently gothic affair than its predecessor, occasionally navigating a feisty toboggan ride through post-Moloko dominatrix fantasies and similarly baroque lunancy. Like the heroine of some post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie (with subtitles) Reeta-Leena Korhola creeps nervously from the spaceship, eyes blinking from light-years spent in hyper-travel, before announcing her visit with the loved-up, new-age ‘Blueberry Tree Part I’ before leading her magic space-hippies threw a nuclear ravaged landscape of M83 proportions (‘Blueberry Tree Part II/III’). Bizarrely, it’s still all rather supple, rarely wronging a foot and as easy on the ear as air itself.
Fashion-defying purveyors of cuddly electro-acoustica. Like Psapp. Like Bjork. Only easier to spell.