Sunday Features - CDs - October 10, 2004 (Part II)

Husky Rescue (Catskills)

What is it with Scandinavians and country music? Maybe it's the inherent sadness and the dark night of the soul attracts the residents of the world's northernmost outposts. Or possibly the copious capacity for drinking away the pain?

Finnish multi-instrumentalist and all-round musical magus Marko Nyberg leads the charge. His delicate, country-folksy yet contemporary music is surely the work of an artist touched by the chilly majesty of his homeland, and much more besides. He speaks of his influences as being ‘the magical moment’ and mood in movies. David Lynch, Lars von Trier. Wim Wenders, Lukas Moodysson, Russ Meyer, Scandinavian architecture, Erik Satie, the airy lushness of French impressionism and Philip Glass. The sound of Arvo Part, warm and honest country music and a lot of other things in pop culture (such as) graphic design and photography.

Marko Nyberg and his band have struck gold with teir debut album for Catskills. The country-influenced folk-pop with organic instrumentation and sparse, affecting samples, made extra sweet thanks to the swooning vocals of Reeta-Leena Korhola and Emma Salokoski.

These are fine performers, whose love for the genre is clearly genuine rather than simply tongue-in-cheek, and by the sounds of it, the love of folk and country melancholy has now spread to Finland and one Marko Nyberg's band Husky Rescue.


Title: Country Falls
Release Date: October 11, 2004

Not that "Summertime Cowboy" is exactly Alt.Country in the fatalistic, Handsome Family sense of the term. Indeed, it's a quite fabulous collision of styles. It's built around a sublime, whirly Northern soul groove featuring samples, impeccably funky drums, Stax-style chopped guitar and an impossibly smoky and sultry vocal from unknown 20-year old Finnish girl Reeta-Leena Korhola. Remember the name. You'll hear more from her, mark my words.


Title: Summertime Cowboy
Release Date: October 4, 2004

Mad mash up of Pepe Deluxe cohort Marko Nyberg's acoustic bliss out 'City Lights' with Roxy Music's 'Love Is The Drug' and 'When Doves Cry' by Prince. Backed with a minimal electronic beats version.


Title: City Lights (versions)
Release Date: August 19, 2004

Rich, melodic mood music from Pepe Deluxe cohort Marko Nyberg, whose downtempo, acoustic-driven tracks draw on '70s film scores, Pink Floyd and the contemporary stylings of artists like Zero 7 and The Bees. Swooning vocals come courtesy of Reeta-Leena Korhola, with guest musicians providing lap steel, tremolo guitar and Rhodes trimmings.


Title: City Lights
Release Date: June 17, 2004

Unlike many artists who cite such wide-ranging influences, you really can detect them in Nyberg’s music. Each song is a self-contained mini-movie aiming for its own unique emotional impact. Take ‘New Light Of Tomorrow’, a slow burning Floyd-ian epic, a hushed meditation on hope and doubt. Both intimate and immense, this is the stuff of heartbreak, a happy-sad reverie.

Somewhere between the moody cinematics of Pink Floyd, the quirky orchestrations of The Bees and the lounge-influenced French instrumental scene, Finnish bunch Husky Rescue drop their second 10" through Brighton's Catskills label.


Title: New Light Of Tomorrow
Release Date: March 11, 2004

As clear as icewater, as dazzling as the Aurora Borealis, as jolting as a splash in the face from a Finnish lake; the music of Husky Rescue is more than capable of refreshing even the most jaded palate and warming the cockles of those left cold by lesser talents.


Title: Sleep Tight Tiger
Release Date: September 15, 2003

When asked to describe his own work, Nyberg’s metaphors are unusual but entirely appropriate: David Lynch meets the night-less night in Lapland, he suggests, or perhaps Bambi meets big bad wolf and they become friends. If you can read that and not be intrigued, you are an iceberg, my friend!