Brighton and London-based indie label Catskills Records celebrates their 20 anniversary and just like Fluff and Gravy Records, the label which can trace their origins to its first release by Sonorous Star, featuring label founders Khalid and Amr Mallassi just released a compilation of music from some of their wildly genre-spanning artists, artists who have specialized in electro pop, hip-hop, punk, country, prog rock and others titled Catskills Records: 20 Years of Victory. And along with the retrospective look of where the label has been and their overall aesthetic, the compilation includes two new tracks from label mainstays Pepe Deluxe and Husky Rescue
Finish electronic music act Husky Rescue have developed a reputation across both their native Finland and Scandinavia for a songwriting approach that focuses on restless experimentation — and for material that sonically and aesthetically walks a very careful tightrope between anxious tenseness and childlike innocence. Now if you had been frequenting this site last year, you may recall that I wrote about two singles off the expanded Long Lost Friend album, “Deep Forest Green,” a track that sonically seemed to draw from Bjork, and Talking Heads while the album’s second single “Far From The Storm” seemed to draw from Moonbabies fantastic Wizards on the Beach and Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” — or in other words, cinematic dream pop with an even breezier nature and catchy hooks.
The Finnish act’s contribution to the Catskill Records compilation is the slow-burning and tense “My Shelter,” a single that pairs Ringa Manner’s aching yet powerhouse vocals with gently undulating and twinkling synths, swirling electronics and a cinematic sweep to create a sound that’s reminiscent of Kate Bush and Bjork while being a swooning, romantic ode. As the members of the electronic act explained to the folks at Clash Magazine “‘My Shelter’ is a previously unreleased track we wrote in the midst of a long hiatus. We had recently gotten to know singer Ringa Manner and felt she might have just the right voice for the song. And so she most certainly did: forceful and fragile all at once. Which is pretty much what the song is all about.”
