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  PEPE DELUXÉ – Riding Again, Louder Than Ever

   

  Before their long-awaited Super Sound 25 reissue lands, Finland’s most unpredictable export Pepe Deluxé slam the pedal to the floor with a double-barrelled blast of absurd brilliance: the supercharged double A-side The Ride 2 / Rocket Fuel.

   

  If Super Sound 25 is the party, this is the engine roar that announces it.

   

  The Ride 2

  It all began with a lost video.
  Back in 1997, a young Finnish trio called Pepe Deluxé shot a music video for their demo track Clint Eastwood Rides Again — a Sabotage-meets-cheap-Finnish-’70s-TV fever dream directed by Miikka Lommi (later of Bomfunk MC’s Freestyler fame).

  Budget: five Finnish marks (less than €1). Cast: plenty of friends, including future stars from Husky Rescue and Bomfunk MC’s.

   

  The song evolved into The Ride, featured on Pepe’s debut Super Sound. The video, however, vanished — until now. Recently rediscovered, digitised, and re-released to celebrate the album’s 25th anniversary, it inspired Pepe’s latest evolution: The Ride 2.

   

  Now reborn as a full-blown ’80s stadium-pop-rock anthem, The Ride 2 turns the original’s synth-funk gallop into an over-the-top odyssey of riffs and hooks, soaring double-lead vocals (by Paul Malmström & Charlotta Kerbs) and Mr. Fastfinger’s guitar pyrotechnics.

   

  And because this is Pepe Deluxé 2025, the song naturally comes with a deliriously animated video made entirely by the band — cars instead of cowboys and gangsters, souped-up Volvos out-racing fighter planes and leaping over planets, with physics politely ignored. Their motto: “Death before driving stock”.

   

  Rocket Fuel

  On the flip, Rocket Fuel celebrates Finland’s most sacred national ritual: brewing the world’s largest amount of the most questionable coffee, 24/7. Statistically, it’s the happiest country on Earth. Scientifically, it shouldn’t be — six months of darkness, sideways rain, and caffeine jitters, yet everyone’s grinning (inside). Go figure.

   

  Featuring the “Banshee of Boston” Chris Cote on vocals and thunderous double-kick drumming by metal god Kai Hahto (Nightwish), this is a fuzzed-out ode to bad office coffee, life on overdrive, and the eternal Finnish need for “just one more cup.”

   

  Together, The Ride 2 and Rocket Fuel roar in glorious 7” colour vinyl and digital form — the high-octane warm-up to Pepe’s forthcoming album Super Sound 25, landing 28 November 2025 on Catskills Records.

   

  Pepe Deluxé 2025

  Helmed by James Spectrum (Helsinki) and Paul Malmström (Brooklyn), Pepe Deluxé remain pop’s most inventive outsiders — a duo for whom excess isn’t a flaw, it’s a worldview.

   

Enigmatic duo Pepe Deluxé, comprising New York-based Paul Malmström and Helsinki-dwelling James Spectrum, return with another kaleidoscopic sonic marvel, the shape-shifting musical odyssey that is Comix Sonix out 21 June on Catskills Records.

With such exciting news comes not one single but two, for Pepe Deluxé have gone old-school with a double-A single, ‘Everyone Is’ and ‘Sweet Baby Sun’.

Pepe Deluxé describe A-side ‘Everybody Is’ as “A song about the universal human dance between ambition and uncertainty.” It draws from two wildly different UK music treasures: Northern Soul and long-term mutual musical appreciators The Prodigy. The song features the soulful vocal of Finnish-Swedish singer Charlotte Kerbs and masterful drumming by Teppo Mäkynen, whose ever-evolving grooves would drive lesser stick wielders to tears. Renowned teacher, composer, author, researcher, and builder of experimental musical tools, Bart Hopkin, contributes a plethora of gems from his ‘Instrumentarium’, a 100+ collection of one-off instruments, here and throughout Comix Sonix. As always with Pepe Deluxé, expect the unexpected.

The AA-side, ‘Sweet Baby Sun,’ is a Boléro-style composition celebrating birth while also mourning the loss of those things dearest and most valuable to us. “Witnessing one’s children growing up and parents growing old is both the greatest privilege and, at times, unbearably heavy and painful,” say Pepe Deluxé. These emotions find expression in the song’s vocals and music. And even the song’s production: hear the lead singer John McGregor’s voice growing both older and clearer – as if he were traveling through time by leafing through a family photo album. This effect was achieved by combining a Beatles-era trick of recording vocals at different speeds with the use of lo-fi to hi-fi microphones. Charlotte Kerbs’ vocals, in turn, veer from swimming in the background to soaring high above the storming orchestra in moments of poignant intensity. The song’s impressive final crescendo snares are courtesy of Teppo Mäkynen, whose drums were recorded in a vast industrial hall. Bart Hopkin’s unique instruments create again an organic soundscape that, when merged with Paul Malmström’s mighty modular synthesizer, paints abstract yet clear sonic images of life’s pulse and movement.

Those are just two tasters for the extraordinary album that is Comix Sonix, its title alone a hint of the visual and action-packed 3-D nature of the music, where the soundscapes transcend boundaries, akin to a vibrant, explosive, and ever-moving sonic comic book. Each hook and every groove is a story, intertwined into a tapestry of feelings, and with references from pop culture, all beneath Pepe Deluxé’s enticing playful smile.