Pepe Deluxé

Finnish ensemble Pepe Deluxé first gained notice near the millennium's outset through sample-driven electronic work, only to steer toward an expansive fusion that merged neo-psychedelia with Baroque pop. Their initial outings, beginning with the 1999 album Super Sound and its U.K. Top 20 single "Before You Leave," delivered polished, lounge-oriented blends of trip-hop and big beat. Over time the group moved beyond sampling altogether, culminating in the 2007 release Spare Time Machine, a fuzz-guitar-driven effort that enlisted dozens of players. The 2012 project Queen of the Wave, billed as an "esoteric pop opera in three parts," incorporated numerous rare and eccentric instruments, while 2021's Phantom Cabinet, Vol. 1 was presented by the band itself as "an impossible adventure."

Pepe Deluxé came together in Helsinki during the mid-'90s with founding members DJ Slow, James Spectrum, and JA-Jazz. Their track "Call Me Goldfinger" surfaced on the 1997 compilation Return of the D.J., Vol. 2, widely regarded as one of the era's standout turntablism releases. The group supplied remixes for various Finnish dance outfits, and their self-released 1998 demo EP Three Times a Player drew favorable coverage that secured a deal with Brighton-based Catskills Records. Super Sound followed in 1999, issued stateside by Emperor Norton. The Nina Simone-sampling single "Woman in Blue," later renamed "Before You Leave" for clearance purposes, appeared in a 2001 Levi's campaign and climbed to number 20 on the U.K. singles chart. Around the same time the band reworked material by Tom Jones, the Cardigans on "Burning Down the House," Eminem's duo Bad Meets Evil on "Nuttin' to Do," and Jacknife Lee on "Bursting Off the Backbeat."

The 2003 album Beatitude introduced multi-instrumentalist Paul Malmström and leaned further into rock textures; it also marked the first Pepe Deluxé record issued without DJ Slow as a core member, though he still appeared on one cut. Its single "Salami Fever" attracted attention via a martial-arts-themed video, and the track was later interpolated by the Prodigy across two separate songs. Spare Time Machine arrived in 2007 as the band's first fully sample-free statement, evoking vintage garage rock and psychedelic pop in place of earlier hip-hop and club influences. JA-Jazz departed in 2008, at which point Malmström joined on a permanent basis.

Several years went into assembling the ambitious fourth album Queen of the Wave, which featured such uncommon instruments as Edison's Ghost Machine and the Great Stalacpipe Organ; the set later received an American release on Asthmatic Kitty. In 2013 Pepe Deluxé created the soundtrack for the game Angry Birds Go!. They also wrote and recorded "The Surrealíst Woman," the theme for a graphic-novel adaptation of Salvador Dalí and the Marx Brothers' unrealized script Giraffes on Horseback Salad; the song emerged as a 7" single and on the accompanying soundtrack album, both issued in 2019. Phantom Cabinet, Vol. 1, the group's fifth full-length, surfaced in 2021 and continued the quest for lost instruments by employing the Sexophone and the World's Largest Cowbell.