Pepe Deluxe 'Spare Time Machine' album

The sight of most bands limping into the ring for album three is painful to watch: bruised and bloodied, lacking imagination and that killer (right) hook, the crowd can hear the canvas beckoning. To see Pepe Deluxé, the Finnish duo who thrive on invention and reinvention, come out floating and stinging like the proverbial butterfly and bee is, conversely, a sight to behold. With a brand new album - Spare Time Machine - ready to go, Pepe Deluxé now deliver the opening punch with this feisty little 7".

Pepe Deluxé are James Spectrum (AKA shaven-headed 35 year old Finnish scholar of sonics, Jari Salo) and his associate JA-Jazz (AKA Tomi Paajaanen). Forming in the mid-‘90s, the band signed to Brighton based Catskills in 1998. Their debut album, Super Sound, was so notoriously sample-laden that three versions were eventually created, each ‘cleaner’ than the last as it grew in stature and was licensed to Sony. In 2003 the group’s next album, ‘Beatitude’ appeared and Pepe Deluxé showcased less reliance on samples without losing a jot of the upbeat party spirit that infuses their sound. Now ‘Spare Time Machine’ has arrived, taking things up yet another level. It has all the funk of their best material but doused in the spirit of uproarious ‘60s psychedelia and ‘70s prog-rock. What’s more it’s entirely sample-free.

A blast of fierce and feline garage rock, 'Pussy Cat Rock', and it's hauntingly psychedelic flipside 'Ms. Wilhelmina And Her Hat', hint at the musical delights awaiting on the forthcoming album. Combining Pepe's trademark offbeat sonic research with lyricism of equal strangeness and wonder. Happily, both studio experimentation and lyrical flights of fancy are tethered to red-blooded funk-rock from a future-past dimension where King Crimson are led by Clyde Stubblefield and get down with prime-time Lee Hazelwood.

If all of this wasn't enough to guarantee the band a KO victory, then their new venture into the live arena should floor any opponent. After a stunning debut in Helsinki in December, plans are afoot to bring the band over to the UK for shows this spring. Time to get in Pepe Deluxé's corner I reckon...

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Pepe Deluxe - Spare Time Machine