Pepe Deluxé – Everybody Is / Sweet Baby Sun
£2.00 – £2.50
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.
