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Candle lights and campfires Some of you may remember Ville Härkönen, Petri Varis and Ensio Kinnunen from Maryland ("up and coming Coldplay-alikes", as the British Drowned in Sound web magazine called them). Now the boys come together under a new name, Ville Härkönen & Velvet. Their first album Lemonade Cowboys will be released just before Rokumentti Festival, and at the festival the band will present the choicest shots from the studio and play songs from the brand new album. Härkönen has taken himself the task writing all the songs for the lot. Often the tunes could best be described as country, austere as a Tuesday morning, or urban folk music, but there are also Neil Young -style distorted guitars, traces from melancholic schlagers, fooling around with Latino sounds, some tender lullabies and some downright shouting at the top of one's voice. What's important, though, is that the music is always more about candle lights and campfires than callous neon lights or chilly strobes. "Velvet is a real band with great songs and clear ambitions. We had a record deal before we had the band. Then we got our first festival gig before we had come up with a name, and our first cover story before we had made our first demo tape. It is nice to see that for once, everything is early enough and big enough from the very beginning," Ville chuckles. So let's stick around and see what happens next for this band for which anything seems to be possible. |
