Against a backdrop of leafless birch trees in the Finnish fall, two bizarrely appointed men stare into the camera.
Jari Salo wears a fur coat beneath a transparent raincoat, tinted seventies-style glasses on his nose and a picnic basket filled with assorted paraphernalia in his right hand. Beside him, Tomi Paajanen gawks into the distance. Over a leather jacket and jeans, he too wears a transparent rain cape while an enormous inflatable white pointing finger is tucked beneath his right arm. Slung over his left shoulder are two fishing nets of the sort children might use to catch tadpoles. It’s a photograph from Pepe Deluxé’s early days, featured on the Finnish Wikipedia page dedicated to the band. Why begin a FIDELITY feature with an image analysis? Because Pepe Deluxé is so eccentric and brilliant at the same time that captures their creative spirit better – except, of course, for the music itself.
And with that, let’s hand over the microphone: “What you will hear now will bring back memories to some, will open up new feels to others. But most important: Will keep alive to all and all times what can really never die: The many moves of…” These are the opening words of Super Sound 25, a newly remastered anniversary reissue of Pepe Deluxé’s debut album, Super Sound, originally released in 1999.
Following the spoken-word introduction, accompanied by billowing synthesizer textures, comes the perfectly timed insertion of another sample: the shouted words “Three Bad Brothers” from “Paul Revere,” a track on the Beastie Boys’ debut album, Licensed To Ill. It made sense at the time – when Pepe Deluxé first entered the studio to record their debut, a friend joined the two founding members, and the group initially operated as a trio. Since the mid-2000s, however, Pepe Deluxé has been a Finnish-Swedish duo, a lineup that remains intact to this day.
The opening track, “Three Times A Player,” gets things moving with punchy hip-hop drums, electronic beats, orchestral keyboard flourishes, and plenty of vinyl scratching – all the ingredients that made Pepe Deluxé one of the most creative bands in the Northern Hemisphere are already here: hip-hop, psychedelic rock, electro-funk, and, above all, excessive sampling of pretty much anything but the kitchen sink fuse into a kind of neo-soul. Picture this: Beastie Boys meet Burt Bacharach, Tricky, and the Leningrad Cowboys to throw a raucous Finnish dacha party. The result is essentially an audio equivalent of the photograph in those Finnish birch woods discussed above.
In the years that followed, Pepe Deluxé increasingly established itself as a full-fledged band, sometimes involving as many as 30 musicians in the recording studio. On the more recent Phantom Cabinet Vol. 1 (2021), for example, the duo incorporated sounds they had recorded themselves using the world’s largest musical instrument: the “Great Stalacpipe Organ,” located in a limestone cavern in Virginia. On the debut, Super Sound, by contrast, sampling still takes center stage. The second track, “Before You Leave,” draws on Nina Simone’s classic “After You’ve Gone,” a fragment of Public Enemy’s “B Side Wins Again,” and a groove strongly reminiscent of the opening theme to the TV series Futurama, composed by French electronic music pioneer Pierre Henry. “Big Muff,” meanwhile, borrows old-school beats from the long-gone Bronx outfit Grandwizard Theodore & The Fantastic Five, along with vocals by George Clinton and bass lines courtesy of Bootsy Collins.
The production is clean and articulate, with a cheerful way of respecting every note, every sound, and every remixed element. The sessions made use of vintage equipment, including a six-channel mixing console originally built for Finland’s national broadcaster for the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. The result lends the 14 tracks considerable depth and richness. What emerges is a vibrant kaleidoscope of grooves, scratching, beats, and lush vintage textures that will put any audio system through its paces.
Pepe Deluxé – Super Sound 25 (1999/2024)
Label: Catskills Records
Format: CD, LP, digital download (24-bit/48 kHz)