At one point, comprised of Marko Nyberg (vocals and production), Antony Bentley (composer and musical director) and Johanna Kalen (vocals), the Finnish electronic music act Husky Rescue have developed a reputation across their native Finland and Scandinavia for relentless experimentation — and for material that walks a careful tightrope between an anxious tenseness and a childlike innocence.
Their last album The Long Lost Friend is being re-issued worldwide as a double album — the first album consisting of the original album’s first eight tracks; however, since the initial recordings and release, vocalist Johanna Kalén has left the band because of health issues, and the second album consists of Husky Rescue’s most recent work between the duo of Nyberg and Bentley.
According to press notes, there is a real story of a long lost friend that informs much of the material on the first album. As the story goes, the long lost friend in question was someone Nyberg was particularly close to throughout most of his childhood — in fact, the two played music together and had a deep mutual understanding that comes from very close friendships. Sadly, the two friends lost touch with each other through most of their twenties, but while Nyberg was writing the songs on Long Lost Friend, he had regained contact with his dear friend. Reportedly, the material as a whole blends the literal and metaphorical, so the material manages to be about more than just one individual friendships — but varying states of emotional intimacy and how difficult and confusing it is to attain them.
Album single “Deep Forest Green” pairs Kalén’s smoky vocals with a sinuous bass line, propulsive drum programming, gently undulating electronics, and a looped whistling sample to create a song that’s tense and anxious and simultaneously breezy. It’s by far some of most eccentrically unique and yet accessible pop I’ve heard to date, sounding as though it owns a sonic and thematic debt to the work of Bjork, Talking Heads and others.
