Psychedelic Helsinki meets Laurel Canyon – Tuomo & Markus’ new album comes out today
A respected Nordic indie folk duo Tuomo & Markus release their new album today. Changing the game produced by Tuomo & Markus – i.e. Finnish soul/jazz singer/pianist Tuomo Prättälä and singer-songwriter Markus Nordenstreng (from Helsinki roots rock band The Latebirds) – in their home country and in studios around the USA.
LISTEN FOR CHANGING THE GAME
BUY GAME CHANGE
Game Changing features intriguing new tracks like “Wishful Information,” “Highest Mountain,” “We’re Not Buying It” and “Love Coming Down,” inspired by a Steely Dan studio song and themed around the #metoo movement. Game Changing also includes the panoramic, paranoid “Predator”, produced by Tuomo & Markus together with multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Wilson (Dawes, Father John Misty, Angel Olsen).
VIEW “WE DON’T BUY IT” (E-STUDIO LESSONS)
VIEW “THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN (LIVE IN E-STUDIO)”
LISTEN TO “WISH INFORMATION”
LISTEN “LOVE COMING DOWN”
LISTEN FOR THE PREDATOR
The songs received immediate applause, with EARMILK writing, “The tallest mountain, building dynamically as graceful string arrangements swell below, 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” features funky sounds from guitar legend Marc Ribot (Tom Waits, Plant/Krauss, Black Keys), and Tuomo & Markus return to the soft and fresh 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 break away from their traditional conventions in search of something more heady and groove-laden than we’ve ever heard from them before.”
Tuomo & Markus – who ignited the Wilco Solid Sound Festival earlier this year with an exhilarating live performance – are celebrating Game Changing with an extensive international tour schedule. North American dates to be announced soon. You can get updates from 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 acclaim around the world, with Rolling Stone’s David Fricke hailing it as “a wondrous debut album—full of the band’s pioneering stories, the painted desert psychedelia of the American Beauty era Grateful Dead, and the modernist extensions 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.”
Tracklist:
Changing the game
Desirable information
Predator
Let this season go
The highest mountain
Galway
Hecho En Mexico
Aliens with extraordinary abilities
We’re not buying it
Love Coming Down
Hearing voices