“The sound of psychedelic Helsinki blows through LA’s Laurel Canyon”
A respected Nordic indie folk duo Tuomo & Markus have shared their latest single ‘Love Coming Down’, available now via Schoolkids Records/Grandpop Records on all DSPs and streaming services.
Musically inspired by Steely Dan’s studio song and thematically inspired by the #metoo movement, “Love Coming Down” announces the upcoming release of Tuomo & Markus’ long-awaited new album. Changing the gamearriving everywhere on Friday October 14th. Pre-orders are now available.
LISTEN “LOVE COMING DOWN”
PRE-ORDER GAME CHANGE
Tuomo & Markus – i.e. Finnish soul/jazz singer/pianist Tuomo Prättälä and singer-songwriter Markus Nordenstreng (Helsinki roots rock band The Latebirds) produced in their homeland Finland and in studios across the USA. new songs like “Wishful Information”, “Highest Mountain” and “We’re Not Buying It”, all now available on all DSPs and streaming services. The latter two tracks are joined by official performance videos, which are now streaming on YouTube.
All three songs have received immediate critical acclaim, with EARMILK writing, “Highest Mountain, which builds dynamically as graceful string arrangements swell beneath, showcases the group’s poignant songwriting and penchant for creating immersive, dreamlike soundscapes.” Blackbook, meanwhile, named “Wishful Information” as one of three new songs you need to listen to, praising the track’s “piercing observations about this troubling new age of algorithmic mind control.” “We’re Not Buying It”, featuring funky sounds from guitar legend Marc Ribot (Tom Waits, Plant/Krauss, Black Keys), Tuomo & Markus return to the soft and refreshing sounds of the late 60s for their latest offering. “, wrote The Hype Magazine. “While their previous efforts focused on a folk-inspired core, their latest gem sees them breaking away from traditional conventions in search of something more woozy and groove-laden than we’ve ever heard from them before.”
VIEW “WE DON’T BUY IT” (E-STUDIO LESSONS)
VIEW “THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN (LIVE IN E-STUDIO)”
LISTEN TO “WISH INFORMATION”
Game Changing also features the panoramic, paranoid “Predator,” co-produced by Tuomo & Markus with multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Wilson (Dawes, Father John Misty, Angel Olsen), now available everywhere for streaming and download.
LISTEN FOR THE PREDATOR
Tuomo & Markus – who lit up Wilco Solid Sound Festival with an exhilarating live performance earlier this year – is celebrating Game Changing with an extensive international touring schedule. North American dates to be announced soon. For updates visit tuomomarkus.com.
Tuomo Prättälä and Markus Nordenstreng met for the first time in 2007 and soon started working together as a duo, inspired by a shared passion for vocal harmony and a wide range of American music, which has its roots in rock, folk, jazz, soul and psychedelia. Over the next half decade, they wrote and performed together occasionally traveling to recording sessions at Tucson, AZ’s WaveLab Recording Studio, supported by such high-profile friends and fans as Calexico’s Joey Burns, John Convertino and Jacob Valenzuela, Wilco’s Pat Sansone and John Stirratt, and the Jayhawks’ Gary Louris.
The result is a double LP, 2016 Dead circuits, earned worldwide acclaim, with Rolling Stone’s David Fricke hailing it as “a marvelous debut album—full of the band’s pioneering stories, the painted desert psychedelia of the American Beauty era Grateful Dead, and the modernist continuations of Wilco and Wilco. Tucson band Calexico.” “Dead Circles is a rich tapestry of acoustic orchestration,” declared Seattle, WA’s influential KEXP, “often understated but never exciting or meaningless. Over delightful melodies, the duo’s harmonies float airily to mind with homages to CSNY and Simon & Garfunkel.”
After mastering the studio, Tuomo & Markus turned into a wonderful six-piece live band, which included Finnish jazz trumpet sensation Verneri Pohjola, pedal steel guitarist Miikka “McGyver” Paatelainen, bassist Jeremias Ijäs and drummer-trombonist Juho Viljanen. About changing the game. The band’s live performances proved wildly ambitious, showcasing an expansive sonic approach that saw them share the stage with Neil Young, Wilco, Jonathan Wilson and The Jayhawks, as well as a memorable 2017 performance at Austin, TX’s SXSW and KEXP live sessions highlighted by a widescreen . Cover of “Jack Straw” by The Grateful Dead (streaming HERE).
Now, with the long-awaited Game Changing, Tuomo & Markus have built on their previous triumphs and created something even more special, an urgent, electronic collection of inventive improvisation and emotionally direct vocals that simultaneously conjure up both the Finnish north and the American West. From the morning play of the album’s opening title track “Aliens With Extraordinary Talents” to the extended, winding roads of “Hearing Voices”, the new album confirms Tuomo & Markus as uniquely visionary musicians whose roots and energies reach far, wide and wide. deep, through genre, era and geography.
“The only thing you can count on/Are things changing,” Prättälä and Nordenstreng sing in unison on “Love Coming Down” — a promise that is made over and over again on this album,” writes Fricke in the album’s exclusive liner notes. “Six years in the making and ending amidst fear and uncertainty many of us have never known before, Game Changing is another album of new beginnings, from a band whose future is still being written. Here’s the story so far.”