New Look, New Sounds - Welcome to Piknik!
Uusikuu has a new look and new sounds too. And so: here’s Piknik! Piknik is a third part to a trilogy that started with Flamingo in 2019, and Karuselli in 2022. With these albums our main aim was to blend in the vintage sounds of Finland with vintage sounds of the world while moving through time - time and space travel at the same time! Apart from our Uusikuu originals, we’re mostly stuck in the 20th century though. In the last three albums, we’ve managed to squeeze in one song from 2004, one from 1990, one from 1984, and the rest is properly old stuff. Weirdly perhaps but for us they sound equally old or new. Anyway, the stories are timeless. It’s mostly about “love the Finnish way”, i.e. love that we’re simply dreaming of, love story gone wrong, regrets about mistakes we have ourselves made…
Piknik is a musical melange of sounds and rhythms. We dance around the picnic blanket to various styles from traditional Finnish tango to a bit of rockabilly polka, old school swing, jenkka, humppa, a bit of bossanova, country, and French chanson vibes. The contributors to our musical potluck include old Finnish masters like Unto Mononen and Toivo Kärki, international superstars like Rolf Soja and Lee Hazlewood, and also our very own Laura Ryhänen, Heikki Herttuainen, and Florian Dohrmann. Music knows no borders or boundaries. All that matters is “hyvä meininki!”
Most of all, Piknik is full of interesting characters. There’s the girl from the red light district who literally danced away. There are two young women who unfortunately fell in love with the same guy but managed to overcome their disappointment through their friendship. We are also joined by two very unlikely friends: the woman of long embraces and the man of the gentle hills. There’s also that calm and quiet lady from the Finnish forests who is possibly a bit of a serial killer… And a hapless bank robber and an addict pharmacist who both wish that the darkness of the night would slowly make their guilt fade away. And somewhere on the edge of the park there’s also the couple who got a bit too drunk drinking their backyard wine. To provide some positive energy to this strange bunch, past us runs a happy little reindeer who’s racing to get home to his mother…
This all is what our Piknik is made of. And the people behind Piknik we want to thank, in addition to the people who made the songs we play, are: Our fabulous friend Milana Misic, who agreed to come to Piknik as a guest vocalist. It was lovely, incredibly easy, and lots of fun to work with you and we hope that this is only the beginning of our cooperation! Our trusted sound engineer and all around audio wizard Jörg Orlamünder made us sound good - and lent us his ear and good taste when we needed it the most! Our wonderfully talented photographer Tatjana Coralie Klytta and superbly innovative graphic designer Ryan Quarterman have an even more difficult task of making us (especially tricky with the boys of the band!) also look good - but they worked their magic again. Ryan is also the mastermind behind the design of our new website and our postcards and posters. Chris Parkinson offered his aesthetic vision to us in the shape of two wonderful music videos to accompany the pre-release singles of the album. Finally, we are eternally grateful to our FANTASTIC record label impresario Christian Pliefke at Nordic Notes who again put his trust on us and gave us the freedom to follow through our ideas and vision to create this album. Kiitos!